WHEN THE LEAVES TURN BRILLIANT in Hudson, so do writers, readers and storytellers, via books, theatre and film. Novelist Joseph Boyden, poets Jon Paul Fiorentino, Mark Abley and political journalist Stevie Cameron headline StoryFest 2008, a literary event held annually in this picturesque town west of Montreal. Not surprisingly, there’s a story behind the stories.

For many years, actress Phoebe Nobbs Hyde, fifth generation of an old Quebec family, held performances of Shakespeare on her front lawn at Greenwood House, an elegant heritage home near the Lake of Two Mountains. When she died in 1994, she bequeathed the house to a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation of historical property. It’s now a popular museum, the Greenwood Centre for Living History, and StoryFest, the jewel in their annual activities.

“She was a great promoter of the arts,” says Audrey Wall, executive director of Centre and member of the StoryFest organizing committee. Begun in 2002, StoryFest has grown with the help of many volunteers and partners, including the Hudson Village Theatre and St. Mary’s Parish Hall, where some events are held.

Next Tuesday, author Stevie Cameron will discuss the Canadian political scene and her latest book, The Pickton Files (2007), the story of Robert William Pickton and the women he is accused of murdering. An investigative journalist whose books have most famously explored politics and corruption in government, Cameron has also published On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years (1995) and The Last Amigo: Karlheinz Schreiber and the Anatomy of Scandal (2001). She will appear at the Village Theatre, 28 Wharf Rd. at 7:30 p.m.

Novelist Joseph Boyden will read at the Hudson Legion on Nov. 6, just a stone’s throw from the shore of Lake of Two Mountains. His popular debut novel Three Day Road was short-listed for the 2006 Governor General’s Award, winning the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and his latest novel, Through Black Spruce, is nominated for the 2008 Giller Prize. “When Joseph Boyden accepted our invitation last year, who knew that his new book would hit the top of the charts!” said Audrey Wall.

A “Poetry Invitational” is organized by the Greenwood Poets, a group of amateur and more experienced poets from the Hudson area. This year, local writers Jon Paul Fiorentino, Mark Abley and Susan Gillis will join Ottawa poet Susan McMaster on Nov. 12 to read and talk about their work at St. Mary’s Parish Hall. New and upcoming voices in poetry can be heard at the Poetry Free for All on Nov. 9, where aspiring poets are invited to read from their work.

For the first time this year, StoryFest includes theatre and film. Theatre Panache, a non-profit company based in Hudson, has partnered with StoryFest to produce three theatre events: the internationally successful The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, Three Old Bags created and written by local artists Mary Harvey, Gissa Israel, Pina Macku and Emma Stevens, as well as two shorter plays from the Montreal Fringe Festival, Even Steven by Jason McCullogh and I Don’t Know Where Here Is by Jessica Rose. All at the Hudson Village Theatre on Wharf Road.

The film Fugitive Pieces, based on Anne Michaels’s novel and directed by Jeremy Podeswa, will play on November 3 at the Hudson Village Theatre. Storytelling on stage, page and screen: something Phoebe Nobbs Hyde would surely have enjoyed. StoryFest 2008 continues through November 12.

http://www.greenwood-centre-hudson.org/storyfest.html

Mélanie Grondin is currently ghostwriting a non-fiction book as well as working on her own novel.