Lit Fest panels to cover a wide range of timely topics

||| FROM MATTHEW GILBERT for ORCAS ISLAND LIT FEST |||

This year’s Orcas Island Lit Fest (June 3 – 4) boasts an extraordinary lineup of authors and artists whose work will anchor the event in some of today’s most pressing challenges while also celebrating the beauty and power of the written and spoken word. Between the fest’s opening panel, “The Survival of Humanity Needs a New Story,” and a stirring evening of literature and music, panelists will discuss everything from “Writing Is a Political Act” to the joys of reading and writing about animals.

Prominently featured at Lit Fest 2022 will be the voices of women, told through a prism of topics from the historical to the very personal, often focusing on how “story” has been both an oppressive and liberating force.

It begins with “Women Who Confound Expectations,” where panelists will take on the injustices of a system that has constrained the choices of womanhood for millennia. As moderator Kristen Millares Young describes it, “For thousands of years, women have been expected to behave in certain ways (e.g., marriage, childrearing). Their choices were not freely made. Those who diverged from expected norms were punished in ways both large and small.” But as Audre
Lorde has written, “women are powerful and dangerous,” and their silences will no longer protect them. Panelists hope that by listening to another perspective, audience members will become more open to the world, inspired to (in the words of James Baldwin) “make [it] a more human dwelling place.”

The influence of history continues with “Hiding in History: Uncovering Women’s Untold Stories” and “Where You’re Coming From: An Exploration of Family, Heritage, and Place.” In the first, four novelists will discuss the fine balance between truth-telling and storytelling as they shine a light on women from the past who inspired their work and why their stories need to be told. In the second, four authors of memoir, fiction, and poetry will share how they navigated the
complexities of personal identity as they sought to reclaim their pasts. “It’s hard to interrogate our personal histories on the page, especially when those stories involve others whom we love,” says moderator Tara Conklin. “Family histories often reveal blind spots, trauma, and long-held secrets. Writers risk exposing themselves in ways that are uncomfortable and potentially controversial. And yet all of our panelists have done exactly that – they’ve chosen art over comfort.”

And finally there is “What’s Love Got to Do with It: Telling Stories About Relationships.” The process of writing is an intimate experience, and writing about personal relationships even more so. In this panel, authors of prose and poetry, erotica and lyrics, come together to explore the ever-shifting nature of love in their work. As panel moderator Danielle Frandina notes, “The writers on this panel are each so different in their styles and forms, yet love is at the foundation of their writing – love for their art, love for other humans, love for the way art creates connection. We’ll talk about how we approach and express love, sex, and intimacy in our writing, but also how we articulate the difficulties of love – the gravities, hard relationships, and the loss or lack of love.” Two of the panelists, Dao Strom and Emily Kendal Frey, are recent Oregon Book Award winners in poetry.

For ticket information (both in-person and virtual), go to the OILF website. To support the group’s efforts to continue bringing quality literary programming to Orcas Island, please visit their GiveOrcas Campaign page. There are only a few days left!