‘Small Town, Big Stories’: Smiths Falls launches its first literary festival

After 18 months of work, the community of Smiths Falls has come together to create the inaugural Smiths Falls Literary Festival.

Local residents, along with those from across the region and beyond are invited to celebrate the art of storytelling and the written word this September.

The festival is a real community effort, being organized by the Town of Smiths Falls in partnership with
the Rotary Club of Smiths Falls, The Book’s Better Bookstore, the Smiths Falls Public Library,
staff from Duncan J. Schoular Public School, and local businesses Arlie’s Books and Bowie’s.

Lanarkist caught up with one of the principle organizers, the town’s Tourism, Arts and Culture Coordinator Jeff Murphy, to learn more about the festival.

“Originally, we were actually contacted by a couple of local authors from the region, not specifically from Smiths Falls, but they had this idea for a literary festival, and they were looking for somewhere to call home… so we started a process with them,” Murphy told Lanarkist.

“Unfortunately, the original authors decided to drop out. The feeling at the table was we wanted to create something that was more all ages, more family-friendly, something that was really more accessible to the whole community.”

Through the works of local writers, and those across Ontario, organizers hope to explore the story of Smiths Falls as well as storytelling in general.

“That’s where we’ve hit upon the tagline of ‘Small Town, Big Stories,’ and we’re really going with something that speaks to the identity of Smiths Falls, while also focusing on the artistic talent of the Ottawa Valley,” Murphy explained.

The first event will be a local non-fiction panel with history buffs Ted Outerbridge and Doug Phillips. They’ll be sharing stories of the town’s founding and its development over the years.

The festival will feature two local authors, Christopher Hind in the young adult panel, and Elle Wither in the fantasy panel. Additionally, local musicians Nick Di Gaetano and Pat Maloney will be discussing songwriting and storytelling at the local music club Bowie’s.

Murphy expressed the organizers’ goal to make the festival family-friendly, and engaging for youth as well as adults. The festival will include a youth writing contest presented in partnership with local public schools.

“We’ve started a writing contest for kids and youths, and then all the way up to adults. So we get community participation as a whole, but that gave the schools something they could assign at the end of last year. The kids can work over the summer on that,” said Murphy.

“We’re combining that with… in-classroom visits from local authors as well, where they’ll talk about the process of writing a story… At the end of festival, we’re going to take the successful entries and we want to be able to publish them into a book, and give it back to the kids.”

Alongside the literary events, the festival will also feature a cabaret-style mystery theatre performance from Outerbridge Magic.

“The Outerbridges are kind of champions of Smiths Falls. They moved here probably seven, eight years ago now, from Montreal. They’re world class illusionists. They travel the world with their show,” Murphy explained.

“Their current show is all about telling the story and history of Smiths Falls through the lens of this haunted house that they bought here. They just got back from China, where they’ve been touring, telling them all about our community, which is just wild to me.”

Proceeds from the show are being donated to the Rideau Roundtable and their eco literacy program, supporting environmental education opportunities for local youth.

“It also dovetails really nicely with one of the featured authors, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, who’s a world-renowned environmentalist, and she’ll be talking about her writings and works in literature, but also that environmental piece,” Murphy added.

The Smiths Falls Literary Festival will take place on the weekend of Saturday, Sept. 19 and Sunday, Sept 20, 2026. Organizers are encouraging residents and visitors to buy tickets early, as space is limited to keep the events welcoming and engaging.

“This year, we’re just really looking to, obviously, generate some awareness of the event… But I think our true hope is really that the community of Smiths Falls embraces it and really take some ownership and some pride in it, and see it as their own,” Murphy expressed.

“The goal as we look to build this out over three, five years, is to really bring in lots of different pieces of storytelling, not just the written word.”

For more information about the festival and to buy tickets, visit the Town of Smiths Falls website.