Up in the northwest end of Toronto next weekend — May 3-6 — you’ll find one of the most exciting literary events in town. Now heading into its third annual event, The FOLD, a festival that focuses on literary diversity, has been making waves. Thirty authors — from Omar El Akkad to Kim Thuy to Sharon Bala — will appear, and they’ve just announced a multi-year partnership with Audible. Going into this third annual FOLD, the Star asked founder Jael Richardson:

Are you where you wanted to be at this point?

I’m surprised at how well it’s been received on some levels. We get a lot of support, a lot of excitement and enthusiasm; I think we still struggle to get people to buy tickets, (but) some people and some communities are super excited and have latched on very quickly. There have been book clubs, people who said they thought it was for diverse people (only) — diverse authors for diverse communities. For change to really happen we have to get everybody to be seeing this as a festival that they can attend and want to attend. And I think we still have some room to grow in that area.”

What new communities are you connecting with this year?

Literary events have not typically paid attention to people in the deaf community in particular, and so this year we’re going to have captions. And we’re talking with the deaf community about having almost like a track specifically for the deaf community — so deaf authors for deaf audience members. Oftentimes in marginalized communities our question is ‘How do we integrate?’ When we spoke to folks in the deaf community they said ‘We’re interested in gathering together and having events like this that are for us by us.’

There’s been a lot of talk about accessibility recently, something important to a festival dedicated to diversity. What challenges have you faced in ensuring the FOLD is accessible?

We were in the really beautiful museum space and it fits probably just the right amount of people who come to our events. But if we go over that it means not only are we already quite tight but it’s more difficult to move around. In City Hall, there’s just more lane space and more room to remove chairs for wheelchair access and we have more room to have screens so we can have captioning. So it’s one of the things you have to wrap your head around, prioritizing accessibility, instead of thinking about things like esthetics, if the room is pretty and if the room is interesting, and if it has historic meaning. All of those things have to be put at a distant second.

There’s also financial accessibility ...

Paying $400 or $250 for some of these writing conferences is not good. We always want to keep our all-access passes at $110 or under and then our day passes are about $50. This year we have something called “patron passes” so people could buy a day pass or an all access pass and it would be gifted to somebody else. We’ve gotten as many donations as we’ve gotten requests.

Is your main focus on an event for readers or writers or a little of both?

I think one of the things we’ve realized from starting the Fold is there’s been this immense gap in general in all aspects relating to diverse literature. We’ve been asked to do a lot of things from outreach to schools to writing workshops to recommending books. I think we’ve seen the most immediate response and interest from writers. Some of the writers come to hear from other writers and some come to go to the workshops. We also are getting more interest from teachers and librarians who are just readers.

Tell me about the innovations you’re most thrilled with introducing this year.

I think that this year the genre fiction stuff for sure, having a panel on suspense is a new thing for us.

Pitch Perfect is a new thing, sort of an extension of one of our most popular sessions, which is the Writer’s Hub (where) typically writers can go around and talk to editors or agents. This year we added another layer in that people submitted writing and editors are looking at (it), then meeting with them one on one. We’re allowing people to do it even if they can’t come to the festival, so eight of those sessions will be through Skype.

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If an attendee had to choose only one or two things, what would you suggest? What’s the must-see?

Well I think without a question Tanya Talaga’s book Seven Fallen Feathers, is a really critical conversation, and also Robin Maynard’s piece on policing black lives ... they represent two conversations we don’t pay nearly enough attention to. That for me is a hands down: you need to be there because you need to listen to these women talking about really important issues. …. Everything else is a close second (laughs).

This interview has been edited for length and clarityFor more information on the FOLD or to get tickets, check them out at www.thefoldcanada.org or on Twitter at @TheFold_.

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