Shining a spotlight on gritLIT
Whether you love to read and talk about books, are a successful author, or are aspiring to publish your first work, Hamilton’s Readers and Writers Festival has something for you.
gritLIT is an opportunity to not only celebrate great books and national and local authors, it’s a chance to learn and be inspired to be the author of a great book, too.
It lives up to its full name – gritLIT: Readers and Writers Festival by offering authors talks, panel discussions, and deep dives into genres and through a series of workshops aimed at would-be, beginning, emerging and established writers.
gritLIT brings together the biggest Canadian authors, up and coming talent, and Hamilton writers for four days of in-person events over the last weekend of April.
One of the defining features of gritLIT, says artistic director Jessica Rose, is its intimate and accessible nature.
“I think one thing that makes our festival special is it really is people's opportunity to get close to some of their favorite writers and also to explore their own craft. And I think a lot of writing workshops out there are for people whose end goal is publishing a book, which is so important. But we try to also steward the writers who just want to put their own story onto paper, or they're interested in submitting their very first story to a literary magazine or something like that.”
The festival, which began in 2004 at the Staircase Theatre, has now added a number of new elements, including field trips and off-season events.
“I am really excited about the field trips,” says Rose, who took over the reins of the festival last year. “Most of our events are downtown at the Homewood Suites by Hilton and we have 1,000 visitors or so every year to the festival. So how can we find ways to make sure that they're also enjoying the wealth of what Hamilton has to offer?”
This year’s festival, April 23 to 27, will include three offsite events. The first is at Local History and Archives the Hamilton Public Library Central Branch, where attendees will learn about the tools and resources available for historical and genealogical research. McMaster University professor Margaret Nowaczyk, author of Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery, will share insights from her own journey of uncovering hidden narratives and personal history through genealogical research.
The second is at the Hamilton Farmers’ Market, when Burlington-born picture book author Derek Mascarenhas (The Mango Monster, 100 Chapatis) leads a morning of stories and art-making at the Hamilton for young ones and their families.
The third is a workshop entitled “If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Let’s Write Them” at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. In this walk- and write-around the gallery, participants be guided by award-winning Hamilton novelist, poet, visual and multimedia artist Gary Barwin, and create new writing inspired by what they see.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson will kick off the festival at the Playhouse Cinema. A renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, Simpson has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her latest book is Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead. According to the gritLIT program, “Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song — bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.”
The festival’s name was chosen as a tribute to Hamilton’s character “but from there, I think we've really expanded it to include the more gritty reads that I think we highlight at the festival this year. For the first time ever, we're doing a horror event on Saturday night.”
That event will feature Cheryl Isaacs (The Unfinished), A.G.A. Wilmot (Withered), and Pasha Malla (All You Can Kill). Malla’s seventh book was recently announced as the Hamilton Public Library’s Hamilton Reads for 2025 and is also the pick for the gritLIT Book Club.
Book club leader and CHCH journalist Annette Hamm will lead the author in an in-depth discussion about his latest novel, which is described as “White Lotus meets Shaun of the Dead in this absurdist take on the wellness retreat.”
gritLIT also includes a short-story contest, which is open to submissions from across Canada. Three winners will be announced at a virtual event that will kick off the festival. This year’s contest attracted 125 entries, by far the greatest number ever.
Contest manager Paige Maylott, a local writer, came up with the idea of doing a staged writing contest. Writers were asked to submit the first part of their story and to end on a cliffhanger. From there, a short list was developed and those writers were invited to add more to their story. That continued for another round, until three winners were chosen.
“It’s an experimental approach to traditional writing contests but I think people had a lot of fun, and the numbers showed that people were interested,” says Rose.
She expects interest to also be strong in a session dedicated to a book called Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food. Its stories explores an era of unprecedented change and the impacts of climate change, technology, crop diseases, droughts, and the loss of pollinators. The session will feature the book’s editors A.G. Pasquella and Jeff Dupuis, alongside local contributors Gary Barwin, Anuja Varghese, and A.G.A. Wilmot.
In its annual Spotlight Series, gritLIT asks an award-winning established Canadian author to help us shine a light on a few new or emerging writers whose work deserves national recognition. This year, join Sarah Raughley in conversation with Maya Ameyaw (Under All the Lights) and Sadi Muktadir (Land of No Regrets).
A longtime fan favourite is Drafts and Drafts, which closes the festival on Sunday. It’s an exclusive sneak peek of some works-in-progress by featured authors Maxie Dara, A. Gregory Frankson, and Paige Maylott.
Workshops cover the gamut of writing challenges including writer’s block, imposter syndrome, handling rejection, self-editing, along with sessions dedicated to writing about trauma with care, speculative poetry, and writing for teens.
A flash fiction contest challenges Hamilton’s new or emerging authors to a speed-writing test where they will be given a prompt and one or two required elements and one hour to come up with a short story. The winner, decided by local author Nicola Winstanley, will receive a $50 gift certificate from Epic Books and have their story published on the gritLIT website.
Individual and weekend passes are now on sale now. There are free events, as well, but they require registration. The best value, says Rose, is a $100 weekend pass that provides entry to all sessions, except the writing workshops.
“I always recommend that to anyone who's never been to gritLIT. It’s a good way to just introduce yourself to a lot of things.”
Rose says one of her goals is to expand year-round programming. That includes more marquee events with leading authors, such as Margaret Atwood, Emma Donoghue, and David Robertson.
There are also more social events, such as monthly silent reading events at Mosaic on Barton Street, where people come to write or read over cocktails, and an annual adult spelling bee.
