The eighth annual The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) runs from April 30 to May 7, 2023. FOLD is Canada’s first festival dedicated to diverse authors and storytellers. This year’s festival is presented in a multi-modal format, beginning with a virtual festival and transitioning into a mix of in-person and hybrid events. FOLD 2023 features over 50 authors from Canada and around the world, with online events including Disabled Futures, Canada Reads - The Final Tea, and Publishing 101, and in-person events including The Historical Fiction High Tea and the Spoken Word Showcase, and the return of The Great Readception: A Literary Cabaret.
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking with author, speaker, and FOLD Executive Director, Jael Richardson.
Jael Richardson. Photo credit: Simon Remark Photography
With so many amazing books being released each year, how do you select who will appear at FOLD?
I think that’s the hardest part of the job. When we first started out, I thought the problem would be that there weren't diverse books out there, there weren't a range of stories, but what we discovered early on is that publishing has been putting out a range of storytellers. Sometimes there isn't range within those stories. Sometimes it's all literary fiction or there's not enough romance and not enough queer romance. There are certain intersections that still are very much underrepresented. But the challenge very early on has been how do you pick who goes on stage? How do you make that decision? I think it's been tricky for us, but what we try and do is think in advance about the kind of conversations people are looking for and need, and the books that have come out in the last year that really highlight that. So that's the first part.
Sometimes a book hasn't come out in the last year, but sometime in the last year, the author has become an interesting force of nature or interesting person in the world, so we're not always limited to the year, and we open it up for that too. I think the big questions are: What topics need to be covered? What conversations need to be had? Which books fit best into those conversations and with the right combination of people? Let's say we really want a particular author, and then we're thinking about who would be good on stage with them. What kind of panel is going to create diversity within that conversation? It took us probably three or four years to have a disability panel because all the authors who were appearing on lists and identifying as disabled were white, and we really wanted to have that conversation reflect what we know about the disability community that it's racially diverse, culturally diverse. So, there are things that sometimes we don't talk about right away because we don't have the right mix of people.
How far in advance does festival planning start?
Because we do the two festivals, we have FOLD Kids festival in November and FOLD in May, we are kind of in festival mode all the time. When one ends, the other begins. That's the clean most collaborative break. Usually for both festivals someone is moving into the next festival before the other festival is even done. Real planning for big FOLD, as we call it, tends to happen late November, we start moving into that mode. We take pitches, we start really paying attention to the books that are out and then early in January we're doing what I would call the Queen's gambit. That's when we really start moving the chess pieces around. We see who said yes and what we can do with the authors that we have.
It’s great that FOLD is continuing with virtual programming. Was a virtual option something you considered prior to 2020?
We had done our FOLD Academy, which is a writing workshop series, in a couple of different ways prior to 2020. We were already using Zoom before the pandemic, which is probably why we were able to flip the whole festival to Zoom on short notice. The reason we had done FOLD Academy that way is because we knew that if we were providing free writing support, that it wasn't restricted to Brampton, it wasn't just people from Brampton who would need it and knowing what we know about our interest in supporting disabled writers and the development of disabled writers, we knew that could be a barrier. Even if you have an accessible space, there are barriers for people in terms of getting there, finances, all those sorts of things. FOLD Academy had already been our place where we were shifting the concept of accessibility, what that could really look like. And then when the pandemic had happened, obviously there was a need and what that showed us was what we're doing at FOLD on that weekend and the special things that are happening are things that people across Canada wanted to be a part of.
Some people had come out from Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, places like that. But when you make that trip, that trip tends to be one you make maybe every five years. We wanted to recognize that what we do isn't just about a physical location or a tourist destination. What we do is really shift the conversations across publishing and shift the conversations and the access for writers and for that to happen accessibly and thoughtfully, it needs to happen virtually. When we reached the part of the pandemic when events started to happen in person again, we knew that we had to continue to do virtual and not just that, we had to increase the engagement in virtual, we've had to invest in virtual not just do virtual, and for me that’s been the most exciting shift since the festival started, recognizing that virtual has a particular kind of value that you need to pour into.
When you do a hybrid event, and we do have hybrid events, I have nothing against them, but they are a very particular kind of experience for a virtual watcher. I think you're watching something in which you know other people are in person and that shifts your ability to engage. Watching virtual events is a lot like in some ways watching TV. You're watching a conversation and there can be value, but there's a certain point in which you want to participate and be involved somehow. That is what I'm really interested in growing and improving over time.
I love our virtual only programming because everybody is in the same place. Pulling up our computer in our home or wherever we are, and we're all accessing each other in the same way. On our platform we really try every year to push how close we can get through virtual, what kinds of conversations can we engage in? What kinds of activities can we take part in together? I think most literary festivals have gotten good at in person engagement, how to create that special feeling when you're in person, but I think a lot of us, ourselves included are still working out how to create similar kinds of value in the virtual space and I think it can happen. It takes a bit of time and figuring things out.
How do you choose your reading challenges and what is April’s reading challenge?
You asked about how we pick our authors; the reading challenge is another one of those tricky moments. There's this pressure to do something different, do something new, something we haven't done before or go deeper into something we have done before.
We have a big team, a planning team called FPAT, the full program advisory team. They all throw a bunch of ideas out, we discuss them in small groups and then we narrow it down into 15-16, we start playing around with language finding the phrase we're meaning to say when we're doing this. Sometimes it can be wordy. We have to keep narrowing it down to 12, so there are always great challenges that we don't get to include. That last cut from 15-16 to 12 is harder than cutting from 30 to 15-16 because inevitably someone on the team will love a challenge and we just can't make it work. We had one that didn’t make it and that was about someone who had been incarcerated at some point. We were excited about what that could push us to read, but we couldn't get the language right, we couldn't find books that we thought might work, and we weren’t sure how to frame it.
This month’s challenge is a poetry collection by a small press. And then the kids challenge is a book of poetry, or a book written in verse.
I’ve heard from people who work in DEI, anti-racism, cultural pluralism, etc that their goal is that eventually their work won’t be necessary because those things will be integrated and expected, and not an afterthought. Do you ever see a future in the publishing industry where the work you are doing with FOLD won’t be necessary?
In my lifetime, no. Also, I think that diversity, inclusion, and the equity work we do it is one part of the diversity approach that we take. In terms of our audience, there are things that we will always need to be working towards and working to improve.
Whenever I do these events, publishers and teachers all believe that at some point we’ll arrive, we're working towards this moment of arrival. I feel like it's really sad. It's really depressing to do that because I think you'll get discouraged easily. I'm motivated by the fact that we’ll never arrive. And that that means that each year I have an opportunity to try something new or push something a little bit deeper, but never with the goal that I'm done. You know, if we're done, the FOLD is being offered in every language in the world, and every material that we're printing is in every language that's offered and it's in 17 sizes for different visibilities, there's just so much to being truly accessible, that I don't think is possible, honestly, in the short term.
With FOLD, for me it is about identifying where our sweet spot is and pushing that further. One of the things I've kind of accepted for the very foreseeable future is that we're an English language festival. That is our primary language of delivery. ASL is something we're trying to incorporate more. We have done things about translations and books in translation, but if I'm being honest, for the foreseeable future, it is to an audience that communicates in English on some level, because those pieces are so deep and complex, and they require more staffing, more staffing with that kind of knowledge and insight, more finances, and it's really hard to get done what we already do. I think that it's always something that we can improve on and that keeps me motivated. What if one day while we're offering the festival, there's an ASL festival, like FOLD where everything is in ASL, it's not just translated, but the volunteers are deaf and communicate in ASL, all the speakers, all the writers? That would be an accessible event for the deaf community. Our festival is trying to support communities that haven't been included before, but I think it makes the most difference when it's coming from a group that lives with that journey in that life. And that's going to be hard for us to incorporate.
As there continue to be debates and conversations about banning books and restricting access to some titles, I think that organizations like the FOLD Foundation and the festivals become increasingly important. Outside of attending and supporting FOLD and other festivals, do you have any suggestions for what people can do if these conversations are happening in their community?
That’s a great question. I'll just speak to this honestly, from a personal perspective. One of the things that I really struggle with is there are things not just about banning books, but in the Black community and in communities that matter to me, that are happening that require support that I feel unable to support fully because of my investment in working on FOLD and just trying to exist.
What I would recommend to people, one of the most important things is to pay attention, to be reading about what's happening and to be paying attention to what's happening, to follow people who are speaking out about these things, who have an area of expertise, because they often provide calls to action. You know, like I can provide calls to action in relation to FOLD and diverse voices and the kind of work I do, but I follow other people to get clear action items about how to support Black Lives Matter or how to support copyright issues or banning books and these kinds of things. It's important to be aware, and then to be active in supporting the people who are doing the hard work and doing the labor.
My next novel is about who's doing the labor and who's doing the work and what are the consequences for those people doing the labor and what should people who are not doing the labor and maybe have time or money or resources, what should they be doing when big things happen? This isn't something I have an answer to, per se, but that's kind of been my approach. That's what I'm thinking about, paying attention to what does it look like to take part in change? And what does it look like when you're taking part in changing one area and somebody else needs your help and you're kind of stretched? How do you manage the mental part of that? I gave you more questions than answers there.
I’m sure it will be hard to choose, but what are three books you are most looking forward to sharing with FOLD audiences this year?
I'm going to share one that's brand new, because I think it will be one people won't know about. It's called A History of Burning by Janika Oza. That book comes out May 3, and she’s appearing in person.
I'm also very excited about Abolitionist Intimacies by El Jones. That one for me, that question about activism and getting involved, that's a book that I want to shout out to push those conversations on that.
And the third one I'll recommend; this is a young adult one that I'm excited about. We're doing a virtual interview with her. Zoulfa Katouh. She’s a Syrian author and her book is called As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow.
The FOLD is presented by Audible Canada. All in-person events at The Rose theatre in Brampton will include book signings. Tickets to the FOLD are now on sale at thefoldcanada.org
Interview by Glodeane Brown
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