STARFest presents Cait Flanders

Share Cait Flanders’ experience as she reveals her struggles to stop shopping and live more simply. Her book The Year of Less resulted in her doing over 100 interviews in the first four months of this year. We are delighted that she is happy to continue talking—to us and to host Michael Hingston.

Cait Flanders’ writing began with an interest in how media and technology affect us and what we buy. Having faced significant debt, she began her popular blog Blonde on a Budget. For seven years she chronicled her challenges to change her habits, her mindset and her life.

In January 2018, Flanders published her first book, The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in A Store, which became a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

The book documents Flanders’ experience buying only consumables—groceries, toiletries, gas for her car—getting rid of 70 per cent of her belongings, learning how to fix rather than discard things, researching the zero waste movement, and completing a television ban. This challenge quickly became a lifeline, as she found herself in a number of situations that turned her life upside down. Realizing why she had always turned to shopping, alcohol and food, and what it had cost her, Flanders changed habits she'd spent years perfecting and discovered what truly mattered to her.

Journalist and author Michael Hingston is the 2018 Regional Writer in Residence. He is the author of Let’s Go Exploring, an examination of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, and The Dilettantes.

Tickets $7 available from the Library's Customer Service Desk or by calling 780-459-1530. Tickets on sale July 9.

  Get all the details at www.STARFest.ca