English Panels set to go at Prose in the Park

Dear Friends of Prose in the Park,

We are delighted to announce that all the English panels and events are ready for the festival. You can find details on the panels on our website at 2017 Programme. Here are some of the highlights.

The day will start at 11 am on Stage 2 (north end of the park) with five Ottawa Story Tellers (OST) providing a sampler one-hour program of oral story-telling. At noon, we will officially open the festival with a bilingual ceremony with the Mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson. A centuries-old trumpet will be used to call in the spectators and the mayor will be accompanied to Stage 2 by bagpipe music. At 12:30 on Stage 2, M.C. Sang Kim will do a thirty-minute interview with readings with Canada's most celebrated humour writer since Stephen Leacock. That's right! Terry Fallis, twice winner of the Leacock Medal, has joined Prose in the Park. At 2 pm, we will listen to passages read by the five finalists of the Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors, comments by the jurors on the short-listed books, and at 2:40 pm, we will announce the winner of the award. There are 41 submissions for the Frank Hegyi Award so the competition will be tough. The four English panels are:

1) Reaching Thirteen (literary fiction) with moderator Ursula Pflug and panelists Neil Smith, Catherine Leroux, Nadia Bozak and Paul Carlucci.

2) The Musicality of Fiction (literary fiction) with moderator Menaka Raman-Wilms and panelists Sean Michaels, Susan Doherty Hannaford and Robert Barclay.

3) Emerging Crime (crime fiction) with moderator Melissa Yi and panelists Michael Blair, Catherine Alstolfo, Jim Napier and Patricia Filteau.

4) Poetry at 150 (poetry) with moderator Michael Mirolla and panelists Sarah Tsiang, Michael Fraser, Kelly Norah Drukker and Bänoo Zan.

We are now enthusiastically waiting for the finalization of the Francophone panels. It is going to be a wonderful festival!

Cheers,

Ian Shaw, Chair, Prose in the Park Organizing Committee

proseintheparkottawa@gmail.com