If at first you do succeed, you must try again could well be the motto for the Okanagan Valley Writers’ Festival.

“Our first year went really really well and was very well supported, so we had to do it again,” said Dawn Renaud, a Penticton-based journalist, author and editor, who is the main organizer for the 2017 festival.

“Everyone who attended thought the festival was very well organized and I know many who attended last year are going to be back this year.”

The second annual Okanagan Valley Writers’ Festival will take place from April 7-9 and will once again take place at the Shatford Centre in Penticton.

The festival will again feature a collection of guest speakers and workshops dealing with a myriad of subjects ranging from self-publishing to contacting agents and publishers and will feature several prominent authors who live in the Okanagan Valley, said Renaud.

A total of 70 participants signed up for the inaugural festival and will be limited to 100 participants this year, she said.

“We want to keep it small enough so that those in attendance can have easy access to our speakers,” she said. “I think the most positive comments we had last year were relating to the fact people could meet up with our speakers after their presentations and the workshops weren’t overcrowded and everyone got to participate.”

The opening night on Friday, April 7 will be a social evening with entertainment and food at the Shatford Centre. Workshops and presentations will begin early Saturday morning and continue all day and will resume once again Sunday morning, she said.

The majority of participants will once again come from Kelowna and Penticton, but she expects burgeoning writers from all over the Okanagan, including Osoyoos, she said.

“Last year we had participants from as far away as the Kootenays in B.C. and even one lady who came all the way from Washington, D.C.,” she said. “Holding a writers’ festival in the Okanagan Valley tends to attract a lot of people from other places because they want to come here to enjoy the beautiful weather and magnificent scenery.”

One of the keynote speakers this year will be Suzanne Anderson, who wrote the acclaimed book called Self Publishing in Canada, which has more or less become the bible in this rapidly growing industry, she said.

The festival has lined up special accommodation rates at the Lakeside Resort and Days Inn in Penticton, said Renaud.

“The majority of those attending from out of town stay for the whole weekend, but obviously those in Penticton and nearby are free to come and go over the course of the weekend,” she said.

Other keynote speakers include:

– Lorna Schultz Nicholson, who is a youth writer who returns for the second year with her impressive resume in the publishing industry. Nicholson tours this spring with two new books “Superhero Ninja Wrestling Star,” a transitional romance from young man to champion, and “Bent Not Broken,” a new tale part of the One-2-One novel series, telling the story of a different pair of teens participating in the Best Buddies program at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School.

As a part of The Okanagan Valley Writers’ Festival, Nicholson is offering one-on-ones (blue pencil sessions) as well as being one of the talented presenters.

– Robert W. Mackay, who is a military-wartime fiction writer.

This is the first year Mackay will be a presenter for the OVWF and he comes with an impressive resume. Mackay spent 13 years in the Canadian navy with service in destroyers and submarines. Since then he has taught school, practiced law, and became a bestselling author with gold medal winner “Soldier of the Horse,” set in the Canadian cavalry in WW I. His latest, a silver medal winner, “Terror on the Alert,” is a thriller set in a Canadian submarine during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Mackay is currently working on a mystery novel, but there is no mystery about his participation as a mentor for this years’ festival.

– Jennifer Manuel is a fiction writer, one that CBC named a ‘Writer to Watch’ in 2016,

Touring with her recent novel, “The Heaviness of Things That Float”, Manuel has received acclaim as a Western Magazine Finalist and recipient of The Storyteller’s Award at the Surrey International Writers Conference.

For those interested in signing up, contact The Shatford Centre Okanagan School of the Arts at 760 Main St, in Penticton by calling 1-250-770-7668 or sending an email to [email protected].

KEITH LACEY

Osoyoos Times