SARAH WILLIAMS
STAFF WRITER
A crime spree is poised to take place, one that will bring several “women killing it” in the crime writing genre to Prince Edward County for the third annual Women Killing It Crime Writers’ Festival. The festival is planned for Labour Day weekend, with the inaugural event taking place Friday August 30th at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.
“This is the festival’s third year and once again we’ve had an enthusiastic response from the crime-writing community. We sent out a few preliminary inquiries last fall and everybody booked within minutes-so we’ve ended up with a truly stellar line-up,” said organizer Janet Kellough
One Corpse Too Many, the first of several events taking place over the weekend, is described as a “riotous evening of table-hopping” in which each author has five minutes to tell each table about their book before switching tables, much like speed-dating.
KILLING IT – New York Times best-selling author Joy Fielding joins a stellar line-up of crime and mystery writers at this year’s Women Killing It Festival. (Submitted Photo)
Authors scheduled to participate in the first event are: Ginger Bolton, Brenda Chapman, Vicki Delany, Joy Fielding, S.M. Hurley, Ausma Zehanat Khan, Hannah Mary McKinnon and Iona Whishaw.
Readers will return to St. Andrew’s on Saturday at 2 p.m for tea and a talk at “The Sanctuary Sparrow”, where specific elements of writing will be addressed by several of the attending writers. Tea will be served by The Friends of Rose House Mueseum.
Saturday night’s event, “A Morbid Taste for Bones” offers a unique setting for Joy Fielding, Hannah Mary McKinnon, Ausma Zehanat Khan and Brenda Chapman. Fittingly, this event will take place in the chapel at Glenwood Cemetery beginning at 7 p.m.
“Someone at last year’s festival suggested it as a venue,” Kellough said. “We went and had a look and realized that it’s a perfect place to talk about death and retribution,” she added, referring to the cemetery chapel.
As well as a wide-ranging discussion about method, murder, motive and mayhem, Saturday evening also features an auction, the proceeds of which will benefit Alternatives for Women, the local agency that supports victims of domestic abuse.
“Vicki Delaney and I will be auctioning off character names in our next novels,” says Kellough, who is also an author.
Kellough cites great success doing this last year, with one person choosing to honour their late father and another choosing to immortalize their cat.
For those wanting to “manufacture a little murder of their own,” the festival also boasts two workshops, one on plot with Vicki Delaney which will take place Saturday morning and another on point of view with Brenda Chapman which will take place Sunday afternoon.
Both workshops are to be held at the Picton Library with part of the proceeds going towards the Library Expansion Building Fund.
Event information and tickets are available at womenkillingitauthorsfestival.wordpress.com, at the Women Killing It Facebook page or in person at Books & Company.