About Us
Mandate
The goal of the festival is to engage the community in this country’s rich and diverse literary culture and to bring attention to local writers. gritLIT aims to make Hamilton, often thought of as a gritty city, a destination for book loving audiences as well as for authors from coast to coast. gritLIT aims, also, is to bring other members of the Hamilton arts community together in at least one scheduled interdisciplinary event.
The 2009 festival will be gritLIT's fifth.
Objectives
- To celebrate excellence in the literary arts
- To reach a wider range of audience than single reading events in the city usually achieve by at once appealing to all ages and demographics and engaging them in narrative and the reading process
- To promote new and emerging authors, both local and from across Canada, by hosting an event where they share the stage with writers of a national and international profile
- To bring cultural traffic to central Hamilton
gritLIT 2008 Organizing Committee
Noelle Allen (Co-chair)
Noelle Allen is the publisher of Wolsak & Wynn. She has been in the publishing business for over seven years and is both familiar with, and well known to, most of the trade and academic presses in the region. She has been a judge for various literary festivals, including the Hamilton Arts Council’s Awards, and is involved in the Literary Press Group.
Jennifer Gillies (Co-chair)
Jennifer Gillies is a short story writer and poet who is currently working on her first novel. She lived in Korea for six years where she contributed a monthly column to Pops English magazine in Seoul, wrote for a children’s educational book publisher in Taipei, and co-authored a freshman textbook at Cheongju University. Jennifer has been with gritLIT since 2005.
Nancy McKibbin Gray
Nancy McKibbin Gray was one of the founding members of the Dundas Art and Craft Association and is an ongoing volunteer with the Arts Dundas Weekend committee. She also works in house management for the John Laing Singers and is a member of the Arts Advisory Committee for the City of Hamilton. Nancy has worked at Bryan Prince, Bookseller since 1989, and she has been with gritLIT since 2004.
Susan Evans Shaw
Susan is a member of the organizing committee for Hamilton's monthly reading series, LiT LiVe, as well as the programming committee for Hamilton's literary festival, gritLIT. She also co-chairs Arts Hamilton's Literary Advisory Committee. In 1997 she won the Hamilton and Region Arts Council's Short Non-fiction Award for Simon Alexander. Heritage Treasures, a collaborative work with photographer, Jean Crankshaw, won the 2005 Arts Hamilton Athens Printing award for non-fiction. Susan is a member of PEN Canada and The Writers' Union of Canada. She has been with gritLIT since 2004.
Chris Pannell
Chris Pannell is one of the organizers of the Hamilton reading series Lit Live and Hamilton's annual gritLIT literary festival. He has published two poetry books: Under Old Stars (2002) and Sorry I Spent Your Poem (1999). He is also the author of a set of three poetry broadsheets entitled Fractures, Subluxations and Dislocations which won the Hamilton & Region Arts Council poetry book award in 1997. From 1993 until 2005 he ran the new writing workshop at Hamilton Artists Inc. His poetry manuscript Drive will be published by Wolsak & Wynn in 2009.
Simone Saunders
Simone Saunders is serving her third year on the gritLIT committee. A gardener, singer and writer, Simone is currently working on the Hamilton Music Project, which will be a book of essays, interviews and photos by local writers and photographers documenting all that is great and good in Hamilton's past, present and future music scene.
Lindsay Hodder
Lindsay Hodder coordinates the children and youth events for the festival. She is the publisher's assistant at Wolsak and Wynn Publishers and also writes book reviews and children's literature in her free time. She has been a member of the Editors' Association of Canada since 2007 and also occasionaly volunteers for their branch journal, Edition. This is her third year with the gritLIT festival.
Ashley Hisson
Ashley Hisson is an intern at Wolsak and Wynn Publishers and an eBook proofreader for Harlequin Enterprises. She also copy edits and writes book reviews in her free time. This is her second year with the gritLIT festival.
History
gritLIT was established in November, 2004, by Hamilton writer and writing teacher Krista Foss. It was, at first, a small, intimate festival, with readings taking place in the Staircase Theatre. Over the past three years and under the leadership of Foss and her successor Rachael Preston, gritLIT has evolved into a larger-scale and wider-reaching endeavor. It has also begun to encompass other arts organizations in the Hamilton community. gritLIT’s recent alliance with the Hamilton Art Gallery, where last year’s readings took place, has given the festival a centralized location and allowed audiences easier access to festival events.
Since its inception, gritLIT has been associated with LiT LiVe, Hamilton’s monthly reading series. The new co-chairs have also recently joined forces with Arts Hamilton and the Hamilton Poetry Centre and look forward to long and rewarding partnerships with both.
