The 14th annual Kingston WritersFest kicks off on Wednesday at The Holiday Inn with 40 in-person events. Artistic Director Aara Macauley says with the return to in-person delivery, the goal behind this year's festival is two-fold.

"It's acknowledging what we've been through in the last couple of years with the pandemic and the issues that have arisen and been front of mind for people, and... to celebrate the fact that we have an opportunity to come back in person," Macauley said. "So it's a celebration of our community, our chance to gather together and process some of what's happened to us, the issues we have had so much time to ruminate over and to really remember what the festival is about."

The line-up of authors include Heather O’Neill, Jessamine Chan, Nita Prose and Shyam Selvadurai. CBC veteran Carol Off will return to the festival to host "The Big Idea" panel discussion which she has hosted for several years. This year's theme is the 'War of The Words," Macauley says Off takes a really active role in collaborating on themes for "The Big Idea."

"The weaponization of words was an idea she's been mulling and is working on creating a new podcast with...This is really an opportunity for her to start exploring that idea of how words that used to have a neutral meaning or a different meaning have been twisted. Things like 'fascist,' 'woke' and 'elite' and how they are used for political and very loaded reasons when they didn't necessarily have that notion before," says Macauley.

Macauley says the aim of the writers' festival is to share ideas.

The theme of the 2022 festival is "Beneath The Surface," and it centers around mental health and addiction, environmental, political and social activism, racial, cultural, gender and sexual identity. Macauley says the marquee event of the "Beneath The Surface" series is Dr. Gabor Maté's talk with Mike Condra about his new book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture.

"Dr. Maté speaks a lot about the links between childhood trauma and addiction, mental health issues, really just the societal issues that lead to these things and what we can do to fix them...He brings a really compassionate, lived experience...these people aren't just statistics to him," says Macauley.

Additionally, there are two and four day immersive writing retreats with workshops on topics including "Writing Comedy;" "How to Get Published;" "Writing a Great Picture Book;" and "Life Lessons: Telling Your story."

"It's incredible in those workshops how close people get over those few days, the idea and the and work that comes out of it," says Macauley.

The festival runs from Wednesday through Sunday, and in-person and virtual tickets are available on the WritersFest website.

Listen to the CFRC interview with Artistic Director Aara Macauley below: