Tonight was a wonderful evening with wonderful folks and a fitting way to wrap a week of celebrating literature in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. All throughout the festival, participants praised our diverse lineup of events, and we really tried to represent many forms of writing, including fiction, non-fiction, comics, poetry, songwriting, screen-writing, and activism, as well as many different aspects of the writing process, from research to planning to composition to publishing to reading aloud. Tonight we discussed lessons learned and ideas for the future, and we shared our experiences of the past seven days. We also announced the winners of our writing contests: Carol Best, Jasper Dinsmore, and Jayden Healey. Congratulations to them!

Helping to organize a festival has been a new experience for me, but by all accounts Words of Warmth has been a great success, thanks to the very many people who played their parts in putting it together. I’m sure we’ll have our heads together over the next while about possible future steps. For myself, I’ll enjoy the respite of this next plateau in the festival learning curve, and take some time to digest the new information and ideas now flooding my brain. There won’t be any resting on laurels, however! We are always busy at Brack and Brine, with new books and other projects, and there is no shortage of excitement coming up on the horizon.

A special shout-out also to Athmandu restaurant, who hosted our final get-together tonight and even brought out a surprise of complimentary fried ice cream.