Frye Festival sets new record for attendance

It was a record-breaking year for the 8th annual Frye Festival, with over 13,000 people taking part in Canada’s only bilingual international literary festival. That sets a new attendance high for the five-day event, which wrapped up today, Sunday, April 29, with a closing event, hosted by the Greater Moncton International Airport, and featuring a grand finale reading by the festival’s very own poet laureate, Poet flyé and Moncton writer Paul Bossé.

The festival’s executive director Rachelle Dugas said the extra effort made to appeal to a wider audience clearly resulted in record turn-outs. “We reached out and people responded.” This effort involved adding new events to the festival line-up and expanding the programme’s writing offerings, most notably the graphic novel and comicbook genres. The goal, as festival chair Dawn Arnold put it, was to “increase the fun factor in this year’s festival and make events more accessible to the public”. This, in turn, attracted some of the best authors and illustrators in their fields like Harvey Pekar, of American Splendor fame, whose appearances during Festival week always drew large crowds.

Most of this year’s events were sell-outs. A number of the writing workshops were filled to capacity and participation in children’s activities surpassed “our wildest imaginations,” acknowledges Arnold, with over 1,200 people taking part in Saturday’s KidsFest alone.

One of the main objectives of this year’s festival was to give youth from Kindergarten through to Grade 12 venues to present their original works of prose, poetry and song through its highly successful and growing School-Youth Program. “The Festival has become a showcase for the extraordinary level of young talent we have here in New Brunswick,” says Arnold. The program includes the Frye Festival State Farm Essay Contest, the Aliant-sponsored Budding Writers and Café Underground events – Café Underground being one of the new additions to the festival programme – and the TD Bank Financial Group’s Writers in the Schools program.

The latter saw more than 9,000 schoolchildren welcome Frye Festival authors into their classrooms throughout the Maritimes. In total, the authors made161 classroom presentations, which is three times last year’s number. That’s an achievement that Arnold and other festival organizers are particularly proud of. “The great thing about the festival is that you never know what’s going to come back to you, whether it’s the child that’s been inspired to become a best-selling writer or the child that’s suddenly picking up a book.”

Among the festival authors who may have had such an impact on local schoolchildren is Jeremy Tankard, whose book Grumpy Bird has been named by two major bookstore chains in North America as one of this spring’s “must-reads”. He was one of the busiest authors-illustrators to come to Moncton for the festival, making 16 classroom appearances in total, in addition to giving readings and leading comicbook workshops for youth.

“It was a lot of fun,” says Tankard of his festival experience. “I loved going into the schools. That was a blast!” Like the other festival authors, Tankard was impressed by the professionalism and passion of the festival team members and the enthusiasm of the festival-goers. “Overall what was absolutely wonderful about the festival is that there is an honesty and genuineness about everyone I spoke to this week – not just the festival people, but the people who came to the events as well.” Tankard’s book sold out across Moncton by week’s end.

The not-for-profit festival is volunteer-driven with more than 100 local residents actively involved in pulling this annual celebration of words together. Their energy, combined with the contributions of its sponsors, makes the festival possible, says Arnold, noting that the support of its sponsors was unprecedented this year. “They did much more than hand out cheques. They took a direct role in making the festival happen,” recognizes Arnold. “We have never had that level of commitment from our sponsors.” Indeed, the festival doubled its private sector support in one year, now accounting for 44% of its revenues.

Thanks to the generosity of its sponsors, the Festival increased the prize money awarded to high school students by over 122% and donated more than $6,000 worth of new books to schools, up $2,000 from last year’s total.

Arnold says she hopes the festival will continue to get bigger and better, though the success of the 8th edition will be hard to beat. “We have set the bar high for the ninth annual Frye Festival, “ she concludes.