It was the seventh successful year for the Pelican Bay Arts Collective's annual spring literary festival.Four venues in Humboldt and Muenster welcomed four authors from the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild (SWG) during the four-day event April 1-4, as well as local contributors from Humboldt and the area. Reid-Thompson librarian Rose Ward, who coordinates the festival along with Barb Langhorst of St. Peter's College in Muenster, said she was very pleased with the overall attendance at this year's events."It was pretty wonderful," Ward said after it was all over. "I went back over the last three years to see what our stats were like, and we're sitting with about the same numbers."Ward says what she finds interesting about the attendance over the four days is that each venue attracts different people and different age groups that vary according to the authors or events. "When we had it at Between the Pages bookstore, it was the followers of writers of that group (Humboldt Writing Club), said Ward. "Then, when we had it at St. Pete's, it was people that contribute to The Society (the college's literary journal) as well as others from the community."The festival provided an opportunity for the public to meet and talk with well-known food columnist Amy Jo Ehman of Saskatoon, whose book "Prairie Feast" was shortlisted for the Canadian Culinary Book award in 2011."When we had it here at the library," continued Ward, "it was an adult crowd that was interested in what our author had to say about living almost out of your own back yard."Ehman read an excerpt from her book, and her anecdotes about attempting to use only locally produced food to cook with was much enjoyed by those who attended the session at the Reid-Thompson Public Library. Ken Mitchell is another author who drew a crowd of followers interested in hearing the Saskatchewan author read some of his "cowboy poetry." Mitchell spoke at the Humboldt and District Museum and Gallery in the first part of the evening. The second part of the evening was scheduled to be a poetry slam, led byHumboldt Collegiate Institute creative writing teacher, Brent Loehr. Loehr had chosen one object - an old school desk in the museum's collection - to be the subject of inspiration for the evening. He then asked all audience members who would like to, to take 15 minutes and write a poem about that desk. About 10 people read out their poems, after which audience members were asked to vote for their favourite poem of the evening - a unique approach to the traditional poetry slam.The success of Pelican Bay Arts Collective's spring festival, however, depends on the presence of known guest authors. So far the organizing committee have been lucky enough to have the support of the SWG, which gives them a little breathing room financially by enabling them to receive the authors for a flat fee and by helping with expenses such as mileage. "As long as we can get the authors, we'll keep on going," said Ward about planning for successive years.Asked about whether the festival would maintain its current program over four days, Ward replied, "If the venues can't accommodate us, then we'll cut back.""Those are all good venues, they're easy to get to," she said. "When I look at my authors, I try to find somebody that's going to fit the venues."It's good to have the bookstore involved, it's good to have the museum involved. St. Peter's is an excellent choice for a venue, and of course the library's always going to be a good choice for a venue," she added with a laugh.
