Mission and History

The Mission of the Frye Festival is to foster the discovery and enjoyment of reading and writing by bringing together local, national and international authors with audiences of all ages, creating an annual bilingual celebration of words.

Values and Operating Principles

The Frye Festival's values are a sense of fun, discovery, accessibility and tolerance.

We promote these values by adopting operating principles which ensure that the Frye Festival is:

• An expanding and rewarding experience that feeds imaginations;
• A quality experience featuring a rich mixture of local, Canadian and international authors and ideas;
• An involving and diverse experience which includes a variety of interactive formats that engage audiances of all ages;
• A multicultural experience celebrating New Brunswick's unique bilingual and multi-cultural community.

Mandate

On behalf of our community we bring the best local, national and international authors, poets, playwrights, graphic novelists, spoken word artists and storytellers to Moncton, New Brunswick for a bilingual Festival during the last weekend in April.  Authors feed the imaginations of children, families, students and booklovers through the workshoprs, readings and dialogues, round tables and lectures. All events are open to the public and take place in a wide variety of venues, such as schools, cafés, restaurants, bars, theatres, shopping malls and libraries all over the region.

Vision

Our vision is to be the best bilingual, international literary festival in the world while continuing to provide the highest level of professionalism, accessibility and excellence.

Our future success will be built upon the quality of our partnerships and we will focus: growing and improving our school program; establishing long-term core funding; strengthening our internal leadership (paid and volunteer); and continuing to bring the highest quality accessible experience to our audience.

Brand Promise

Feed your imagination / Plein la tête

Our promise to all Frye Festival participants, no matter what age or interest level, is that their imaginations will be fed through their experience.

History

Northrop Frye's presence has always been felt in Moncton. Whether it was as a young boy, riding along the streets of Moncton on his bicycle, or upon his last visit to Moncton when many people came to hear him speak, he has left an indelible mark on the city.

In November of 1990, at the invitation of Professor Serge Morin, Northrop Frye returned to Moncton to deliver the Pascal Poirier Lecture at the Université de Moncton. During his stay he had the chance to meet and talk with many Monctonians, and he was able to visit his old home and the grave of his mother in Elmwood Cemetery. 'They were two of the best days of my life,' he reported to fellow Monctonian, Reuben Cohen. The following year, after Frye's death in January 1991, The Northrop Frye Society hosted a gathering of Frye-ites, and John Ayre, Frye's biographer, delivered the Pascal Poirier Lecture.

In 1997 the City of Moncton, under the chairmanship of Paulette Theriault, developed an Arts Policy. As part of this policy it was recommended that the city have a festival to honour Northrop Frye. But it wasn't until December 1998, during the production of a Vision TV documentary in Moncton, that the real seeds of today's Frye Festival were sown.

During this television production entitled "Voices of Vision", John Ralston Saul and Antonine Maillet engaged in a one-hour dialogue about creativity, in both official languages. For festival visionary and founder, Paulette Thériault, more than any other event, this event filmed at the Aberdeen Cultural Centre sparked her imagination and made her believe that a bilingual literary festival, celebrating a great man, a vibrant cultural community and highlighting Atlantic and Acadian authors, was a possibility.

In its first year more than 3,000 people attended the Festival. In 2008 more than 16,000 people attended. The Frye Festival has become one of the major literary events in Canada, and continues to grow every year. More than 300 award-winning authors, from every continent and recipients of almost every major international literary prize, have now attended the Festival. The Festival is the proud recipient of the 2005 Lieutenant-Governor’s Dialogue Award and the 2007 Éloize for Event of the Year.  In 2009, the Frye Festival was names TD Canada Trust Arts Organization of the Year by the New Brunswick Foundation for the Arts.

The Frye Festival is the only bilingual, international literary festival in Canada and is the only festival in the world to honour Northrop Frye.