What happens at the annual CNFC conference?
As one who has been to all but the first conference at Banff and who has watched as each year’s newcomers go through the weekend, I can tell you that the conference is a revelation and a battery recharger. The revelation comes early, perhaps even on the first evening when many of us read from our work. There are so many kinds of literary nonfiction being written in Canada, about so many topics, by an astounding number of practitioners. We realize that each of us, toiling away at our desks, is not alone. There are many out there with the same problems and satisfactions as we have. The battery recharging sneaks up on me somewhere between breakfast with a table full of nonfiction writers sharing ideas while we eat good food in fabulous surroundings, the Saturday workshops that offer new ways of looking at craft, marketing and literary forms, and the plenary session on Sunday morning where we take the first steps that will put some of our ideas for the future of our craft into action.
