What: Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival
Where: Mary Winspear Centre, 2243 Beacon Ave.
When: Friday to Sunday
Tickets: $15 to $140 (single event or weekend pass)
More information: sidneyliteraryfestival.ca
Scaachi Koul is funny, smart, cutting and not afraid of controversy.
Koul, 26, is a writer for BuzzFeed whose humour, commentary and culture writing has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times and the Globe and Mail, as well other Canadian publications.
Last year, she received a barrage of online harassment after putting a call-out on Twitter for story pitches from non-white contributors, which made national news.
Koul will be in Victoria for the first time this weekend as a featured author in the Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival, to read from her new book: One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter.
The debut collection of essays details Koul’s experiences as a writer in Toronto, growing up in a South Asian family in Calgary and feeling like an outsider in Canada and in India.
“I wanted to write a book I would’ve wanted to read when I was younger, one that would’ve made me feel a little less lonely or a little less uncomfortable,” Koul said via email. “I wrote the book for brown girls first. There’s a lot of talk around being relatable for a white audience, which I’m not too concerned about. I wrote for the people that I thought would appreciate it most, but I think the themes are pretty universal.”
Koul writes a lot about her family — “They’re insane people, how could I not?” she jokes — and they feature prominently in the book, which her parents support but have mixed feelings about.
“My mom read the book and called it ‘funny and sad,’ which I’d consider a perfect review,” Koul said. “My dad didn’t read it — I think he knows that there are stories I tell that he’s not interested in learning, so sometimes it’s best to live in a bit of ignorance.”
Koul said her experience of being harassed online and sometimes being criticized for her opinions hasn’t changed how she writes or dampened her tone.
“It’s impossible to live like that — I can’t work with the feeling that someone is breathing down my neck, ready to say something insane about murdering me,” said Koul about online trolls. She did note that she’s more careful about tagging her location and family on social media.
She gets different responses from different audiences.
“I think sometimes white people get sensitive when I talk about race, as if it’s a personal attack on them and their lives. People from other people-of-colour communities seem to have the same experiences that I do, so it seems like something they’ve responded well to.”
The festival strikes a balance between local favourites and a new vanguard of Canadian authors in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, with a mix of readings, workshops and panel discussions.
“We try to have a range of writers,” said festival president Janet Daines. “It started out as very grassroots, with local authors like Susan Musgrave and Patrick Lane. But we’re also trying to appeal to younger people and new audiences.”
Participating authors include Guy Vanderhaeghe, Gary Barwin, Pat Carney, M.A.C. Farrant, Charlotte Gill, Anosh Irani, Yasuko Thanh, Katherine Govier, Kevin Patterson, Jan Zwicky, Pauline Holdstock, Robert J. Wiersema and Times Colonist columnist Jack Knox.
Wiersema is a Victoria novelist who teaches writing at Camosun College and Vancouver Island University and will conduct a fiction workshop. He said he’s always impressed with the range of writing students and their experiences.
“We tend to think of ourselves as this provincial little town, but people come here from all over with so many life experiences,” Wiersema said. “That definitely comes out in their writing.
“In the workshop, we talk about how you see yourself as a writer, your dreams and goals, as well as what it’s like to be a full-time writer.”