Our final day of workshops came to a close today. It’s a bittersweet feeling—but to be honest, by now I’m also pretty tired! It has been a whirlwind of a festival, with 12 events over six days and our end-of-festival social gathering and celebration still to come tomorrow evening. What a tremendous experience it has been. I’m so proud of our group and of the local literary community. Over the past six days I have seen so much mutual support and genuine interest in one another’s work.

We had two workshops this evening: Action Words with Samantha Newman, hosted by Jade Rachwal of the Labrador Friendship Centre and SHIELD, about using language for Indigenous activism, and songwriting with Jamie Jackman. Unfortunately I could not attend both workshops at once, but I was intrigued to catch the tail end of Sam’s discussion of anarchist writing in particular.

My own personal proudest moment of the Festival came tonight, with the official launch of Jamie’s new book, And You Can’t Help But Listen, which we published at Brack and Brine as the first in a planned series of pocket-sized publications that we are calling tea books. Jamie is as engaging and honest a speaker as he is a writer and musician, and tonight he gave attendees a wonderful account of his songwriting inspirations, process, and how the book itself came to be. This evening was his, and the joy and warmth in the room (the event was hosted by Them Days) certainly befitted the Words of Warmth festival theme.

If you missed the launch, you can still hear Jamie talk about the book via the Labrador Morning podcast version of the radio interview he gave this morning. Copies of And You Can’t Help But Listen are also now officially available for purchase.

Jamie Jackman at the launch of And You Can’t Help But Listen. Photo by Aimee Chaulk for Words of Warmth.