By Adam Frisk Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
As Bookapalooza returns for its annual celebration, literary talent is taking over the County, showcasing the local arts scene alongside major international bestsellers.
The festival is hitting its stride with a soldout exhibit hall on Saturday at the Minden Community Centre and a headlining lineup featuring bestselling authors Bianca Marais and Marissa Stapley.
For Douglas Tindal, a Countybased author and arts council member, Bookapalooza is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the literary community that operates quietly behind the scenes.
“When someone moves to Haliburton, one of the first things you see is the incredible range of musical talent. It’s everywhere. Then you see either the visual arts or the performing arts,” Tindal told The Highlander. “You don’t as readily see the literary arts. Bookapalooza is an event that tries to give the literary arts centre stage.”
Stapley, one of Bookapalooza’s headliners, brings literary starpower to the festival with a personal connection to the County. As the first Canadian author selected for Reese Witherspoon’s book club with her novel Lucky, Stapley fulfilled a dream of buying a cottage in Haliburton thanks to the success of the book.
“My reaction was just like… it did feel like winning the lottery,” Stapley told The Highlander in a recent interview. “It’s so rare. I’m still the only Canadian who’s been a Reese’s pick. It’s such an honour, honestly.”
The success of Lucky didn’t just stop there. Next month, an adaptation of Lucky premieres on Apple TV, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, of The Queen’s Gambit, as the protagonist. When asked about letting Hollywood take the reins of her creation, Stapley said it was like taking a leap of faith.
“Lauren Neustadter, who’s a producer at Hello Sunshine, really describes it well. She calls it a trust fall, and you have to do that,” the author explained. “I think a great adaptation uses a piece of book [intellectual property] as a companion. I think it’s less interesting to me to watch something come to life on screen that is word-for-word and scene-for-scene exactly the same as the book, because the mediums are so different.”
Stapley began her writing career in her mid-teens with her father working at a small-town newspaper as a reporter. At just 16 years old, she began covering assignments and writing columns for him when he took a vacation, .
Stapley said her journalism background saved her “from fear of the blank page.
“That deadline-driven environment… there was so much that I learned about writing and really just actually being a productive writer from journalism,” she said.
Joining Stapley on stage is her close friend Marais, who wrote the buzzworthy book Hum If You Don’t Know the Words, a historical novel set against South Africa’s 1976 Soweto riots.
While the afternoon author Q&A and evening dinner are ticketed, admission to the main Bookapalooza exhibit hall is free to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Visitors will have the opportunity to speak with about 40 local writers representing everything from memoirs and young adult fiction to historical drama.
Stapley offered some parting advice for local writers who may be grinding through their first or second manuscripts, and that is it’s a marathon, not a race.
“Never give up. My mom always used to say, ‘you’re the fastest overnight success. It only took a decade,’” Stapley said. “I feel that no writing is ever wasted. It’s so important to find the joy in writing, even through the disappointments, and the rejections, and the struggle to find time.”
As for Saturday’s Bookapalooza, Tindal’s message to anyone who might be on the fence about attending is simple.
“It’s one day a year. And if you miss it, you’ve missed it. So you don’t want to take that chance, do you?”
