N.W.T.'s 15th annual NorthWords literary festival moves online

Amid restrictions on public events due toCOVID-19, the Northwest Territories' yearly literary festival is moving online.

The 15thannual NorthWords Writers Festival, set to take place June 19 to 28, will offer workshops, panel discussions and readings over livestreamed and pre-recorded video, organizers announced on Monday.

"When we met with the board we came quickly to the notion that lots of writers would have their other festivals cancelled and some of them would lose their income, so it was very important for us to keep supporting writers," said festival spokesperson Valerie Gamache. "We can still provide [them] some income."

NorthWords was founded in 2006 to promote northern and Indigenous writers, and give them the opportunity to learn from and share the spotlight with established southern authors and poets. The festival has held events in Yellowknife, Fort Smith and Hay River, N.W.T.

Previous festivals have brought to the territory Lee Maracle, a Sto:loNation poet, author and University of Toronto lecturer;novelist and essayist Lawrence Hill;Richard Van Camp, a Tlicho author from Fort Smith; Catherine Lafferty, a Yellowknife novelist and columnist of Yellowknives Dene First Nation; and northern journalist and fiction writer Patti-Kay Hamilton.

This year's NorthWords lineup is set to be announced later this week, said Gamache, and will include around 15 writers from the N.W.T. and six authors from outside the territory.