I spent a little less than my usual night-haunting, all-day-Saturday-slouching-from-venue-to-bathroom-to-venue, inspiration-sucking hours at the Ottawa International Writers Festival this year. However, I do have some discoveries and some mental meanderings to report.

(Disclosure alert: For those of you who live in the Ottawa area, of COURSE I know that the Fest finished two weeks ago. It’s Slow News, like the Slow Food Movement, linger over the pleasures of life, “the purpose of life is not to increase its speed”, slow is good, “literature is news that stays news”, I want a man with a slow hand…)

(Nota bene: For those of you blissfully ignorant of subterranean artistic currents in Canada’s capital — that is, you don’t live in Ottawa — this is HOT OFF THE PRESSES! LATE-BREAKING NEWS! IT’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW!)

(No more parantheses.)

This was the 12th annual WritersFest. It’s a father and son story, two stubbornly bright men who didn’t know back then that what they wanted to do made no sense and would never get off the ground. Well, it does and it has. Here’s to Neil and Sean Wilson, and all the believers in their absurd, delightful and ever-more-substantial dreams.