The Fraser Valley Writers Festival, a one-day festival celebrating B.C.’s rich literary heritage, is set to take place this Saturday, Nov. 4 at the University of the Fraser Valley’s Abbotsford Campus.
The festival will welcome renowned authors from across the province, including two Governor General’s Award winners: Lorna Crozier, poet and Officer of the Order of Canada, and Darrel J. McLeod, Cree novelist, memoirist, and former land claims negotiator.
Among the stars of the event will be Abbotsford’s own Bradley Peters, a UFV alumni, who will be speaking about his remarkable journey from incarceration to publication. Peters’ debut poetry collection, Sonnets from a Cell, which delves into his personal experiences within the prison system, was released last month from Brick Books.
“I was taking a class on poetic form when I learned about the sonnet,” Peters recalls. “I had never written about my experiences as a child and young adult in and around the prison system, about my family’s struggle with drug addiction, homelessness, mental illness, etc., or my own youth spent in jail cells, breaching probation over and over. I was embarrassed… ashamed. I already felt like an outsider being in university after nearly a decade in construction, but when I discovered the sonnet, it felt like a poetic form tailor-made for me to tell that story, and then I couldn’t write about anything else.”
Peters explains that his book, Sonnets from a Cell, transports you “inside the system” and gives readers “a glimpse of what our fellow citizens are subjected to… I wanted to juxtapose poems of young men finding their way, skateboarding, skipping school, going to church, with the poems of inmates subjected to an inherently violent system, in order to, hopefully, help give readers a more empathic, nuanced perspective.”
As part of the Fraser Valley Writers Festival, Peters hopes to convey the message of perseverance; to “keep writing, keep growing, and keep challenging yourself.”
He recalls advice Griffin Prize-winning poet, Jordan Abel, gave him while Peters was a student at UFV: “You only fail when you quit.”
Peters will be speaking on this and more at a 3 p.m. panel to open the festival, which will run from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. at UFV’s Abbotsford Campus (Room B101) on Nov. 4. The festival is free to attend and open to all.
For more information and to stay updated on the Fraser Valley Writers Festival, visit fvwritersfestival.com.
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