Danielle Geller knows the importance of events like The Victoria Festival of Authors. The creative non-fiction writer first attended the Victoria Festival of Authors (VFA) in 2019; this year, Geller will present on VFA’s New Works panel, where the authors discuss their current works. She describes her first experience at VFA as important because she had just relocated to work a new job here in town.
“It was my introduction to the literary community in Victoria,” says Geller, “because I had just relocated here when I started working at [UVic].”
As a creative non-fiction writer, Geller draws on personal experiences for her stories. Her current project, a collection of essays centred around video games, is an excellent example of this.
“Almost exclusively, I write creative non-fiction, but now I am working on a collection of essays, and I think that’s what I’ll be doing for a while,” says Geller. “It’s a slow process. I’m writing a collection of essays on video games and my relationship with video games. It’s about addiction and attention and my dad because it was the way we connected… But each essay is structured around a genre of games that I played.”
Other authors joining Geller at her VFA panel are Ali Blythe, Neil Griffin, and Yasuko Thanh.
“In the panel, we’re reading about some of the work we have in progress,” she says. “We were asked to submit something earlier in the summer, but I might read from some of the video game essays. I haven’t quite figured it out… We want to read something that people can follow without having the full context.”
VFA is an excellent place for new and experienced authors to learn and grow their writing skills. Geller says it’s important for writers to attend events like the VFA.
“If you’re starting out writing, or it’s something you do as a hobby, these kinds of events can open you up to things that you might not have considered were possible,” she says. “Sometimes it can give you ideas for something you’re working on. That’s one thing, especially for new writers, and then for writers who have been doing it for longer, it can be nice to hear from people who are just starting out and see how things are changing and what conversations are being had, like climate and environmental change.”
Since writing is a lonely practice, the opportunity to connect with like-minded people is what Geller is looking forward to most about the VFA, even moreso this year since the event is mostly in person and only partially online.
“Honestly, a lot of it is just being in community,” she says. “I was able to attend the Association of Writers [conference] in the spring in Philadelphia, and it had been a really long time because of the pandemic, and it was just really generative to be in conversation with writers and attend panels and hear what other people are working on. So, I think that’s a lot of it, being part of that community because writing is so isolating.”
Victoria Festival of Authors
Various times,
Wednesday, September 28
to Sunday, October 2
Various prices and venues
victoriafestivalofauthors.ca