Despite the success of her recent memoir, My Body is Distant, Paige Maylott hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be struggling to break through as a writer.
It’s an experience she draws from in her work as contest manager for literary festival Gritlit, currently underway in Hamilton.
“One of the worst things about applying to contests like this is getting those rejection letters,” says Maylott, who describes her memoir as “the one that took off” after a life of writing stories.
“You put in a lot of time and emotional labour to create these stories and just get a boilerplate rejection letter.”
The festival hosts 30 events over five days — it kicked off Wednesday evening, marking its twentieth anniversary — bringing in some familiar names like Peter Mansbridge and Margaret Atwood into the city but it also celebrates and supports new and emerging writers, like the 70 people who entered this year’s short story contest.
The contest was won by writer Sarah O’Connor, who also works as a programmer with the Hamilton Public Library, for Peach Baby.
But even those who didn’t take home the honours got a personalized letter from Maylott. She said she hopes it provided some degree of support and encouragement.
“All of these writers who are providing these stories are providing their time but also a small financial commitment that makes Gritlit better,” she says, referring to the entry fee of $25.
“I want to make sure we encourage them to come back year after year. This is a relationship-building opportunity.”
People ‘come back, year after year’
While an event last week featuring Atwood was the festival’s official kickoff, a virtual event facilitated by Maylott on Wednesday marked the start of the readings and workshops that make-up the bulk of the programming.
Thursday evening’s talk at the Playhouse Cinema with retired CBC News anchor Peter Mansbridge and CBC Radio’s Elamin Abdelmahmoud, discussing Mansbridge’s book How Canada Works, was sold out.
Interim festival director Jessica Rose says events are programmed to show off the diversity of writing taking place in Hamilton and across Canada, and are also intended for a wide audience, not necessarily the stuffy crowd one might picture if they haven’t been to Gritlit or a literary festival before.
“We want to celebrate huge authors like Margaret Atwood but also want to shine a spotlight on emerging authors… who could be local,” she told CBC Hamilton on Thursday.
“We find once people come to their first Gritlit, they come back, year after year.”
This weekend’s events, most held at Homewood Suites on Bay Street, include:
- Musician and author Tom Wilson and Theatre Aquarius artistic director Mary Francis Moore, discussing adapting the book Beautiful Scars for the stage, on Friday;
- Hamilton Writes, a panel featuring local writers Lishai Peel, Gary Barwin, Dannabang Kuwabong, David Neil Lee and George Matuvi, also on Friday;
- A panel called Speaking Fiction to Power, where authors Alicia Elliott and Jessica Westhead discuss how fiction can be a weapon in the fight against social inequity, on Saturday; and
- What Makes a Community, a panel on Saturday, where writers Casey Plett (On Community) and Matthew R. Morris (Black Boys Like Me: Confrontations with Race, Identity, and Belonging) talk about finding a place in systems designed to keep some out.
Matthew R. Morris turned his experiences as a Black student and a teacher into a bestselling memoir called Black Boys Like Me. He talks to CBC’s Deana Sumanac-Johnson about navigating the education system from both sides of the classroom.
‘Most of us have unique stories’
It’s also a big week for Maylott, who found out Wednesday that My Body is Distant – described by publisher ECW Press as a “virtual and IRL” romance and coming-out story – was nominated for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize shortlist for non-fiction.
She’s part of two more Gritlit events this weekend: a Saturday memoir-writing workshop and a panel discussion with Plett and Kai Cheng Thom on Sunday, exploring “the concept of acceptance and being accepted, flaws and all.”
She said she hopes the writing workshop encourages others to find creative ways to share their personal stories.
“I get to meet a lot of new writers and help them to envision their own stories at a time when, typically, memoir is situated as the genre for celebrities,” she said.
“I believe most of us have unique stories and interesting stories that they can tell, we just need to find creative ways to communicate that, to be able to frame it in a way that is also interesting for others.
“I think I can help them to do that. I am really interested in seeing what they create after the workshop.”