Long Live The Queen Literary Lunch

This weekend’s Long Live The Queen festival isn’t just about the music---it’s bringing in the wordsmiths. Organizer Nathan Doucet says Sunday’s Literary Lunch was inspired by good friends of the festival who are writers, and when local writer Stephen Patrick Clare joined as host the literary ball started rolling. With musicians Daniel Ledwell, Terra Lightfoot and Caroline Keating playing sets between readings by authors Shandi Mitchell, Donna Morrissey, Carol Bruneau, Tonja Gunvaldson-Klaasen, Christy Ann Conlin and Sue Goyette, it promises to be a rocking (and free!) afternoon. For Mitchell, who just returned from India after accepting the Regional Commonwealth Prize and walked away from the Atlantic Book Awards with both the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award and the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, this weekend of celebrating arts and music in the north end is fitting: It’s where she discovered art and artists. “What do I think of a festival that showcases this region’s incredible talents and crashes through the ordinary and mundane? I say Long Live the Queen!”