Student EssaysIn October of 2007, nine writers from ASU attended Wordfest, Canada’s international writing conference in Calgary and Banff, Alberta. See the Canada Opportunities page for future trips. Below are excerpts from these students’ travel essays and a selection of photos. “One thing I particularly appreciate about writing conferences is that they help us to remember we belong to a community of writers. The act of writing itself happens in such isolation that this becomes an important and necessary reminder from time to time. This community aspect was perhaps even more powerful at Wordfest because of its international scope. To hear writers from all over the world—India, New Zealand, Mexico, England, Ireland—read their work, discuss their craft, and affirm that yes, writing does matter and does make a difference in real ways was personally inspiring and enriching.” “Our first stop was Calgary. The city possessed the kind of intimate urban setting as Seattle or Portland. What struck me most about Calgary, was its commitment to social justice—we witnessed several protests while we were there, and a surprising lack of urban poverty … Discovering Banff was the highlight of the trip. Banff’s landscape was covered with snow-capped mountains, an emerald river, and a rustic railroad line passing through. In Banff, the sky was clear enough to see the Milky Way. We hiked, went to readings, ate bison and chocolate, and watched a fawn and her doe nibble on grass. One of our waitresses said she came to Banff for a weekend and never left. I wanted to follow suit.” “Being with a group of writers, many of whom are in my same position, was inspiring on its own – it’s nice to be reminded that you aren’t the only one in this situation, that you aren’t the only one spending most of your time by yourself madly typing on your laptop. Beyond this, being surrounded by all those books, all those authors and literature lovers in one area – if that doesn’t inspire you to continue, I’m not sure what will. One of my favorite aspects of festivals such as Wordfest is simply the reminder of how many people are involved, in one way or another, with literature: it brings a sense of community that, outside the MFA realm, is difficult to find.” “Diversity became a very important word to me during my short stay in Canada. The WordFest workshops and readings provided a multi-faceted and newly inspiring look at writing, at publishing, at the busy world of Arts Administration, at a writer’s struggles in the unstoppable demands of chaotic life. At the Festival, I considered for the first time the importance of the singular perspective. The International WordFest Festival hosted a truly inclusive attitude. The authors, a renowned group of individuals that spans not only countries but also continents, spoke earnestly about the importance of place and of culture to their writing. Workshops began with a reading of the selected author’s work and ended with an open forum Q&A. Each author eagerly and warmly engaged in discussion with audience members, smiles and laughter the only commonality from workshop to workshop. The festival valued the diverse, the other, while still heralding the talents of local writers and of writing with familiar subject matter.” “Driving west across Alberta took us past the location of the 1988 winter Olympic games, through the region where Edward Zwick filmed The Legends of the Fall, and into the Canadian Rockies. I couldn’t stop watching the mountains approach; as soon as I thought we must be almost there, they can’t get any bigger … they did. The small ones, the ones that didn’t break the treeline, the one we hiked, were a mile up; the snow-capped peaks, which surround Banff on all sides, approach two miles high. These mountains made Calgary’s skyscrapers look like, well, Phoenix. Banff is ultimately a tourist town, but it’s small, cozy, very log-cabin and aware of the wilderness. One nice thing was that it was cold, almost fifty degrees colder than Tempe: in the thirties at night, low fifties by day. And yet a waitress told us that you don’t really mind the forty-below during winter! I didn’t believe her.” “Seated at a desk, his pen poised, the photograph’s subject did betray surprise, as though each of us, waiting for an excerpt from the debut novel of Indian-Canadian writer Ameen Merchant, had in fact, burst upon him in his private study, and caught him writing—art being one of the most subversive acts.
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