The Writer's Festival - T1B38

It's the beginning of the school year, still barely pass mid-october, and our synergy class is already off to a rocking start.  As a part of English 8, our class had been to two field trips: The Vancouver Playhouse, and Granville Island. The trip to the Vancouver Playhouse was a blast. We went to see "The Fantasticks", but that's another story. Recently, our synergy class bused to Granville Island to attend the Writer's festival. We left at around 8:45 in the morning, and missed class for the entire day. But hey, it was so good that it was worth it. We listened to three authors briefly summarize their latest books and inspirations.

The first person was Richard Newsome. He's from Sydney, Australia, and wrote "The Billionaire's Curse". It is his focus and greatest accomplishment of the past 10 years. Newsome isn't incredibly famous, but his book has an exciting plot and an interesting trailer. The book is a mystery novel - it's about a boy inheriting about a billion dollars from his great-grandmother. The feeling of being a billionaire is exciting and overwhelming for about five minutes until he realizes that there's a murderer after him. I haven't read it yet, but I'm tempted to. Lifelong mystery quests are adventurous to read about.

The second author is probably amoung the most famous of Canadian authors. He wrote best-selling Airborn, the Silverwing Saga, and has just popped out a new novel: "My Halfbrother".  We gave a warm welcome and a chunk of our time to Kenneth Oppell. He's won the Gigi awards, and about 20 other awards. After getting to know him abit, he's really young for his accomplishments. He also writes almost a whole novel every year. Impressive! ( and experienced...)

The third and last author of the day was Sharon E. McKay. She is also now my new heroine. Sharon is a
war artist. She spent a year in Afghanistan dressed like a soldier to study the situations Afghan children face. Her accomplishment is brought out to the world with her latest book: Thunder over Kandahar. After two weeks of wearing a 30-pound protective vest, and carrying all her own food, you could tell she put a lot of her life into her books. Sharon's had adventures in Uganda as well. Her life is an example of loving devotion to strong kids in war. After listening to a very long long long interview with her, I had only three thoughts in mind. 1. She has so many great stories, and loves to tell them. 2. She lived such a meaningful life. Such energy! Such emotion! and Such journeys! 3. Sharon is one heck of an amazing woman full of love and life. I wish she was my grandmother, or one of them. "Boring" isn't in her vocabulary.

I know, I'm getting carried away here. And I've used too many of the same words.