ELORA – The Elora Writers Festival is bringing its 25-year history to a close with a special literary party at the end of the month.
Books and Beer: The Finale is a fitting cap to the festival’s run, organizers say, bringing one of the writers festival’s most popular authors to the area for an evening of readings, fun and celebration of the festival.
The event will feature Leacock Medal winner Terry Fallis, and is being held Feb. 26 in the Irvine Room at the Granary, part of the newly refurbished Elora Mill Hotel and Spa, starting at 7pm.
Begun as Words by the Water, the Elora Writers Festival has brought scores of Canadian authors to the area in an intimate festival that gave audience members an unparalleled level of contact with top writers and their works.
But after 25 years, organizers found the changing arts landscape was making it more and more difficult to produce a successful event.
Sponsorship dwindled, grant support became unreliable, ticket sales were unpredictable and the costs associated with hosting the event led the organizing committee – all volunteers – to acknowledge that financial viability had moved out of reach.
So this final Books and Beer event was set up to celebrate the festival, Canadian writing and writers, and close out the 25-year history of the festival.
A former political strategist, Fallis’s first book, The Best Laid Plans, was a Canadian political satire he presented first as a series of podcasts, and then self-published in book form.
The book won the Leacock medal and was subsequently published through Douglas Gibson Books, as were his next books.
The High Road and Up and Down were shortlisted finalists for the Leacock medal, and Gibson won the prize again for his fourth book, No Relation. Poles Apart (2015) was a finalist.
Called “the essential Canadian novel of the decade” in the 2011 Canada Reads, The Best Laid Plans was adapted as a six-part miniseries by CBC in 2014, and as a stage musical in 2015. Fallis’s latest book is One Brother Shy — which he discussed at last year’s Books and Beer — and according to his website, he is working on a seventh novel.
With the festival running in late spring, Books and Beer was created in 2015 by Writers Festival committee member Jean Mills as a fundraiser and smaller, intimate off-season event that was also a preview of the upcoming festival.
Tickets to Books and Beer: The Finale are available in advance through the Fergus Grand Theatre Box Office, fergusgrandtheatre.ca, and if available, at the door.
For information, see elorawritersfestival.blogspot.com or email elorawritersfestival@gmail.com.
