Diana Gabaldon agrees to lecture at Moncton Frye Festival

Moncton's Frye Festival will welcome bestsellingauthor Diana Gabaldonon April 29 to deliver the 2017 Maillet-Frye lecture.

Danielle LeBlanc, executive director of the Frye Festival, said tickets are already available for fansof Gabaldon and her popularOutlander series.

The annual bilingual literary festival brings in an author every year to deliver the lecture and this year, LeBlanc says Gabaldon's name came up.

"We started talking about the Outlander series and how the books really talkto us here in the Maritimes, on a cultural level but also on a historical level," she told Information Morning Moncton.

She'll be talking about imagination, inspiration and her unforgettable characters.- Danielle LeBlanc, Frye Festival

"The books ...they start with the Battle at Culloden and that's really what the trigger was for the emigration of the Scots to the Maritimes."

On her website Gabaldon describes the Outlander series as, "Big, fat, historical fiction," that no one can describe but most readers enjoy.

She said she started writing the series in the late 1980sto learn what it would to take to write a noveland whether she really wanted to be an author.

Historical fiction hasMaritimeconnection

LeBlancsaid Gabaldon likely receives hundreds of invitations to literary festivals every year so she tried to make her invitation personal.

"We really focused on the Scottish heritage here in the Maritimes ... one in six New Brunswickers claims Scottish ancestry and also on the bilingual nature of our region and of our festival and that she'd have access to our two readerships."

LeBlanc is looking forward to Gabaldon's lecture at Moncton's Capitol Theatre, which will include a reception and a book signing.

"She'll be talking about imagination, inspiration and her unforgettable characters and everyone who has read the series really likes Claire and Jamie so that's what she'll be talking about."

The Maillet-Fryelecture is named after literary critic NorthropFryeand Acadian writer Antonine Maillet.

The complete program for the 2017 Frye Festivalwill be unveiled on March 21.