The inaugural Growing Room festival last year was a turning point for the local literary community. It was timely and part of a bigger conversation about inclusivity, voice, recognition, and diversity. Growing Room 2017 occurred several weeks after the Women’s March 2017, but festival planning started much earlier. It is, in part, attributable to the forty amazing years Room magazine has thrived—and the dedicated folks who give their time and energy to the magazine.
Growing Room is a celebration, a protest, a reflection, a re-visioning, a gathering, a question and a dream. Chelene Knight, festival programming director and managing editor of Room, shares how Growing Room meets this vision.
“With a very successful first festival under our belts, we are thrilled to bring the festival back for another round of incredible author talks, readings, workshops and more. This year will be a game-changer.
Room has been on the literary forefront since 1975. With constant conversations around what literature is and how it’s changing, we decided to take those conversations and put them into action. We decided to show you. This festival is not only a chance for authors to share their work and gain exposure, but it’s also a chance for the folks behind Room magazine to show the world how necessary underrepresented voices are, and how continuing to put together a festival such as this plants the roots for creating, maintaining, and growing equitable spaces for the future. We need to keep this in mind. We need to keep going. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been a reader of Room for twenty years, twenty minutes, or never picked up an issue. Growing Room is an inclusive festival meant to push boundaries and think outside the box in terms what ‘CanLit’ is all about. This is what we mean by this festival being a game-changer. From the opening night musical event with Vivek Shraya and Shamik Bilgi’s band Too Attached to the very necessary panel ‘White Feminists: Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much,’ moderated by Ijeoma Oluo, Growing Room will break the literary mold.
The difference this year? Growing Room has put a huge focus on mentorship. In 2018 we are offering twice the amount of workshops as last year, and introducing manuscript consults by established authors and editors. Think about how it will feel to listen to a writer whom they admire speak their truths, talk about their process, read from their books, and then sit right across from YOU and talk to you about your writing. What other festival is doing that? What other festival is inviting their supporters and attendees to hold that same space too. Growing Room is not just about authors, it’s about all of us together, sharing space, demanding space, and never letting go.”
—Chelene Knight, programming director, Growing Room 2018
Chelene Knight is a Vancouver born-and-raised graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU. Chelene is currently the managing editor at Room magazine, and the 2018 programming director for the Growing Room Festival. Her first book, Braided Skin (Mother Tongue Publishing, March 2015), gave birth to numerous writing projects including her second book, memoir, Dear Current Occupant (BookThug, 2018). In addition to being a workshop facilitator for teens, she is also a literary event organizer, host, and seasoned panellist. She has been published in various Canadian and American literary magazines, and her work is widely anthologized.
http://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/growing-room-2018/
The second annual Growing Room will return March 1–4, 2018, and will take place on the traditional, unceded, and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish peoples. The festival will include 18 panels and readings, nine workshops, an opening night party featuring music by Too Attached (Vivek Shraya and Shamik Shraya), and a small number of special events and partner events, including a live recording of Room’s new podcast, Fainting Couch Feminists. Panel and readings are by donation with the option to attend for free, while workshops cost between $15–$20 and tickets to the opening night party are $15.
Festival poster art by Apanaki Temitayo
Photo of Chelene by Greg Ehlers