Emma Donoghue, Conor Kerr and katherena vermette among writers at 2025 Frye Festival in Moncton
Frye is an annual bilingual festival celebrating Atlantic Canada's literary scene
Authors Emma Donoghue, Conor Kerr and katherena vermette will be featured at the annual Frye Festival, Atlantic Canada's largest literary festival.
Founded in 1999, Frye Festival bills itself as a "English-French bilingual celebration of books, ideas and the imagination."
It seeks to create opportunities to connect New Brunswick, Canadian and international authors with the Moncton community.
The 26th edition of the festival runs from April 24 to May 4 and features over 40 events, including youth programming.
Donoghue will be at the festival to discuss her latest novel, The Paris Express, which takes readers aboard a suspenseful train journey from the Normandy coast to Paris.
Inspired by a real-life photo of a train hanging off the side of Montparnasse station, The Paris Express unravels over the course of one fateful day, featuring the fascinating stories of the passengers, from a young boy traveling solo to a pregnant woman on the run, the devoted railway workers and a young anarchist on a mission.
Donoghue is an Irish Canadian writer whose books include the novels Landing, Room, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars, Learned by Heart and the children's book The Lotterys Plus One. Room was an international bestseller and was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Brie Larson.
Kerr will attend the festival to discuss his novel, Prairie Edge, which was shortlisted for both the Atwood Gibson Prize for Fiction and the Giller Prize in 2024.
In Prairie Edge, Isidore (Ezzy) Desjarlais and Grey Ginther live together in Grey's uncle's trailer, passing their time with cribbage and cheap beer. Grey is cynical of what she feels is a lazy and performative activist culture, while Ezzy is simply devoted to his distant cousin. So when Grey concocts a scheme to set a herd of bison loose in downtown Edmonton, Ezzy is along for the ride — one that has devastating, fatal consequences.
Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer who has lived in a number of prairie towns and cities, including Saskatoon. He now lives in Edmonton. A 2022 CBC Books writer to watch, his previous works include the novels Old Gods and Avenue of Champions, which was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won the ReLit award the same year. Kerr currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta.
vermette will be at the festival to discuss her novel real ones, which was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize.
Following two Michif sisters, lyn and June, real ones examines what happens when their estranged and white mother gets called out as a pretendian, someone who's not Indigenous pretending to be so. Going by the name Raven Bearclaw, she's seen success for her art that draws on Indigenous style. As the media hones in on the story, the sisters, whose childhood trauma manifests in different ways, are pulled into their mother's web of lies and the painful past resurfaces.
vermette is a Michif (Red River Métis) writer from Winnipeg. Her books include the novels real ones, The Break, The Strangers and The Circle, poetry collections North End Love Songs and river woman and the four-book graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo.
North End Love Songs won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. The Break was a finalist for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. It was defended by Candy Palmater on Canada Reads 2017. The Strangers won the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. real ones was also longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize.
vermette is also a senior editor at Simon & Schuster Canada.
Other authors in attendance at this year's Frye Festival include Charlene Carr, Myriam Lacroix, Shashi Bhat and Chimwemwe Undi.
Bren Simmers, the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize winner, will also be there to discuss her book, The Work. The CBC Poetry Prize is open now until June 1. The winner receives $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and their work will be published on CBC Books. You can learn more here.
You can register for the events and read the full program on the Frye Festival website.
