Seaside literary and artistic gathering

Arts & Words Festival 2025, Gibsons
by Trevor Marc Hughes

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It was a warm summer’s day in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast on Saturday, August 23rd, and the Gibsons Public Market was alive with smiles and handshakes as artists and authors gathered to set up tables and pitch their wares. What stood out early on with this arts and literary festival, was the pairing of visual artist and writer: Cate Baldwin’s vibrant canvas of a woman walking in a sun hat and dress, Sand Beneath My Feet, is paired with the words of Gibson nonfiction writer and member of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society (SCWES), Kathleen Vance. This collaboration would earn the distinction, later on in the day, of winning the festival’s People’s Choice Award.

Mike Starr, co-author of Friends in Nicaragua, and Marion McKinnon Crook, the writer behind the memoir Always Pack a Candle: A Nurse in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, and its sequel Always On Call, both members of SCWES, chatted away as they settled in to their chairs. They are clearly familiar with one another, as are many of the members of the community that came in through the doors. There were more warm handshakes and hugs. This is an established arts community.

Full disclosure: I was setting up a shared book table of my own, showing off copies of my own books The Final Spire and Capturing the Summit. The former title was up for a nonfiction award. I fell into conversation with my neighbour, visual artist Crystal Boeur who has called the Sunshine Coast home for fifteen years and credits the place and its visual grandeur for inspiring her work.

Next to me another author arrived, who writes in historical fiction: J. C. Corry, or John as he introduced himself. He had just ferried in from Vancouver and lauded Gibsons for its sunny scenery. It was twenty-eight degrees outside already, and the air conditioning of the grand hall was welcome. John told me his new book The Storyteller’s War: Geoffrey Chaucer, Reluctant Spy is seven years in the making, and required several trips to Europe to research. His book was up for an award later, in the fiction category.

After meeting the public came the author readings. Marion Crook read a grisly tale from Murder in Vancouver 1886, Vancouver’s Tariq Malik, from his nominated poetry collection, Blood of Stone, and Mike Starr, a poignant passage from Friends in Nicaragua, about the gratitude felt by an impoverished family who receive the means to have their own house built.

In fact, gratitude was something I believe was on display in this enclave in the Coastal Room at the Gibson Public Market, an appreciation for the array of literary talent on the Sunshine Coast and across the province. That was certainly the message relayed by several literary award judges at this fifth annual event.

At the awards, which began with the children’s literature category, after SCWES president Cathalynn Labonté-Smith displays the nominations, Mike Starr, one of the judges in the category, read a moving piece from one of the winners, Gregor Craigie’s book Saving Wolfgang, which is told in a series of letters from a boy to his father, who has committed suicide.

Powell River’s Kristin Miller won in the Sunshine Coast nonfiction category for her memoir Knots & Stitches: Community Quilts Across the Harbour, and Marion Crook got the nod for her historical fiction in the Sunshine Coast fiction category for her Murder in Vancouver 1886.

As the evening’s award certificates had been given out, folks moved toward the food table, and further conversation, discussing creative process and the beautiful setting in the seaside town. Unfortunately, several YVR authors, including myself, are bound to that one deterrent of social activity: the potentially-missed ferry home. Many thanks and handshakes were exchanged. And as the setting sun silhouetted the undulating forms of Keats and Gambier, I noted how grateful I was to live in a place with such an extraordinary collection of literary and creative folk.

[Editor’s Note: For a full list of nominated and winning books visit https://www.scwes.ca/ ]

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Trevor Marc Hughes is the author of Capturing the Summit: Hamilton Mack Laing and the Mount Logan Expedition of 1925. His newest book is The Final Spire: ‘Mystery Mountain’ Mania in the 1930s. A former arts reporter at CBC Radio, he is currently the non-fiction editor for The British Columbia Review and recently reviewed books by Richard Butler, Wade Davis, David Bird (ed.), Ian Kennedy, John Vaillant, and Peter Rowlands. He recently wrote about the late Andrew Scott, typed up an editorial on the subject of historic British Columbia publisher New Star Books winding down, and reported on the recent BC & Yukon Prize finalists evening at Book Warehouse on Broadway in Vancouver.

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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