Literacy is elitist.
It's a form of imaginative elitism that is useless if we as adult literacy educators do not recognize and promote it. So when the organizers of Blue Metropolis, the first International Literary Festival ever to be held in Montreal, contacted The Centre for Literacy last February to ask if the literacy community would like to be involved, it opened a door between what have usually been perceived in the literary world as the first class and steerage class of writing. Linda Leith, Montreal novelist and co-editor of the literary magazine Matrix, had dreamed for years of organizing a local literary festival. Finally, last year, with cooperation from the English and French writing communities, she and a managing board won government and corporate support to create Blue Metropolis to bring 63 authors and translators together for five days of readings, discussions, launches, and others events for lovers of literature. The Centre's board requested something more substantial.