Book Bash Festival 2024

The Guelph Farmer’s Market, on Gordon Street at Wellington, is a trusted location for quality local produce, artisanal baking, handmade crafts, various beverages and farm-related products. Once-a-year it’s also a destination for homegrown literature. 

On November 3rd , from 1 to 4pm, Guelph’s authors and publishers will be onsite to talk about their work and facilitate the joy of reading. Vocamus Writers’ Community organizes the Book Bash, at which Guelph area writers present their recent work and make themselves available to discuss the content and creative process. It’s a rare opportunity for literature lovers to meet writers and acquire books that are not distributed through mainstream retail sources. 

As a writer, I’ve participated at the Book Bash each time I have new work to share. No, it is not a Fahrenheit 451 style destruction of radical writing, nor is it a standard book sale. The actual authors staff the tables. The atmosphere is celebratory, and the wares are unique. There’s nothing more fulfilling for me, as the author, to be able to explain my book and meet readers who have enjoyed my previous publications. Whether I’m meeting someone new, or a repeat supporter of my work, the afternoon is energizing. Also, as an avid reader myself, I enjoy the interaction from both sides of the table, and always return home with books from my colleagues.

Book Bash visitors are sure to find something that suits their reading taste. There’s always poetry, and inspirational writing. The novels offered cover a wide range of genres, including fantasy, and speculative fiction. There are powerful non-fiction works offering insight and education. 

Normally, I offer up satirical short stories, but this year I’ll be bringing a more serious work. “Stories from the Mission” is a collection of stories developed from interviews with the clients of the Royal City Mission, on Quebec Street. The goal of this book is to address questions about our unhoused neighbours like… “Who are they?”… “Why do they choose to live in tents?” … “Where are their families?”… “Why don’t they just get jobs?” These tales will break your heart, and spark your empathy. I hope to see you at the Farmer’s Market on November 3rd .

By Marion Reidel

Against Networking

Networking is a dirty word. Just as the predatory advertisers are ever-trying to co-opt the culture-enriching skills of reading and writing for their own malignant ends, so too have the forces of personal improvement and self-promotion contorted the meaning of ‘networking’ — into a kind of false shoulder rubbing and contact acquisition which turns human-scale encounters into transactions, distorts other people into prospects. Don’t take the bait.

The Book Bash is an event where one can truly enter into a human-scale network, in a sense of the word that will not leave a bad taste in the back of the throat. It is an event which, for an afternoon, concentrates a strange and anarchic collection of local people and groups, who, in many different ways and for many different reasons, share a love of reading and writing and publishing books, and all the other things that circulate around these strange endeavours. 

The only price of admission into this net-work, into this living web of human thinking and concern, is that, just for the afternoon, one be willing to love these things, to hold them dear alongside others, as most of us already do. That’s it. If you do that, you won’t need to worry about ‘networking’ per se, to trouble yourself with accumulating business cards, or declining them from others. You will simply enter into the cacophony of conversations that humans are always having with one another, and, less frequently, with the wider world. It’s fun, too. And most of the people are kind and approachable. And they have worked hard to say something and to bring it to print. And there’s even worms in a bucket of dirt made from old composted books.

Speaking personally, in years gone by, the Book Bash has been a place where, for me, the density of these conversations is hard to match. Every year, friendships and collaborations are begun, or maintained, at the Book Bash – not because myself and the people I speak with are trying to ‘network’, but because we are participating in something we love, and doing it together. Whatever conditions promote these kinds of conversations seem very abundant at the Book Bash, seem to flourish among the murmuring voices of humans doing what they’ve done for longer than anyone can remember: trading stories, ideas, poems, and images for the love of doing it. The advertisers and the self-promotion gurus, though they’d like to, cannot hold a candle to what Book Bash does – they can only mimic it.

By James Nowak

I have been attending BookBash as an author and micro-publisher for some years. It’s a great place to meet readers, network with other writers – whether published or aspiring – and find wonderful books, both for myself and as holiday presents. I encourage anyone interested in reading and supporting local writers to attend. 

By Marian L. Thorpe

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