Frye festival blends old and new for 25th anniversary
Moncton's bilingual literary festival returns next week for its 25th anniversary with new twists on classic events
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Moncton’s bilingual literary festival returns this week for its 25th anniversary with new twists on classic events.
“Even if you’re engaging with something that feels familiar, you’re going to get something refreshing every time,” said Noel Bourque, program manager of the Frye Festival.
This year’s festival, which runs from April 19-28, has 50 events on its schedule including trivia night with drag queens Rose Beef and Barb Wire, conversations with authors, a book binding workshop and story time events for kids.
To mark the event’s anniversary year, Bourque said they wanted to offer festival goers a look back at the last two and a half decades. Mayor Dawn Arnold will be the guest speaker at a Frye Festival retrospective literary lunch on on April 24.
Bourque said they will also welcome back a few familiar faces.
“We have several people in our lineup that will be presenting at this year’s festival who were present at the very first festival in 2000,” he said.
“That’s incredibly special. We kind of get to see the scope of what we’ve been doing for 25 years and see how writers from here work has evolved and how it resonated with people throughout that span as well.”
Bourque said they’ve tried to incorporate multi-disciplinary events into the festival and find a balance between the new and the familiar as the event approaches the milestone year.
“People tend to gravitate towards (events) when there is musical accompaniment or if there’s visual projections,” he said.
He said this year’s tea time event will include live music from Martin Daigle.
This year’s author lineup includes, Nova Scotia’s Elaine Mccluskey, American author Brandon Taylor and Quebec author Andréane Frenette-Vallière. Bourque said he encourages people to come out to events with the authors whether they’ve read their work or not.
“People are going to come away with something regardless of whether they’ve engaged with the work beforehand,” he said.
Information on events and tickets can be found on frye.ca
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