These photos from Newfoundland's Writers at Woody Point festival are sublime

Angela Antle is the producer and host of Weekend AM heard in Newfoundland and Labrador.  She co-hosted with Shelagh Rogers and Ron McLean this year's Writers At Woody Point Festival, the renowned literary festival held in Newfoundland's Gros Morne National Park from Aug. 11-16. Follow Angela on Instagram at AAntlersNL, where these photos were originally posted.

We're snaking along the shore road into Woody Point and I'm fiddling with the dial. The mountains are causing the AM signal to fade in and out as CBC host Bernice Hillier interviews local musician Charlie Payne. He's snorting through his laughter when he recalls the leap of faith ("It was pure foolishness!") that led him to buy the wrecked shell of a building that has now become the heartbeat of the Writers at Woody Point Festival (WAWP).

On the first night of WAWP, the tall windows and doors are thrown open to the breezes of Gros Morne National Park and we're all singing along with Bruce Cockburn as he performs "Waiting for a Miracle." Not a bad way to start the 12th edition of the fest.

One of the things I love about WAWP is that it gives writers and songwriters equal billing. This year, visual art was added to that mix, with artist Shary Boyle's and singer-songwriter Christine Fellows' two performances of "Spell to Bring Lost Creatures Home." It was a thrilling show of Fellows' live music and smart lyrics and Boyle's subversive and humourous projections.

This year's WAWP writers were Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Kathleen Winter, Joan Clark, George Murray, Elizabeth Hay, Steven Galloway and Margaret Atwood. Within minutes at the podium, Atwood had the audience in stitches with a wicked story from her 2014 short fiction collection, Stone Mattress, that skewers a cantankerous old poet.

When the sun came out, musicians Anita Best and Sandy Morris performed traditional Newfoundland songs on the back deck of Galliott Studios as kayakers paddled by and Minke whales surfaced.

"Downtown" Woody Point consists of a few homes, an ice cream and souvenir shop, the water taxi dock, the Post Office, the Legion, two restaurants, a café, a convenience store and a noisy fish plant. During WAWP there are hundreds of new visitors, but "the strip" is so tiny, you keep running into the same people giving WAWP a summer-camp-for-adults feel.

How can you turn down a guy offering you stinky balls? A local chef sells three kinds of moose ball sandwiches: "Stinky" (blue cheese), "Sweaty" (hot sauce) and "Crunchy" (with fried onions).

Giller Award–winning author Miriam Toews read from her 2014 novel All My Puny Sorrows on the Lomond River bank in Gros Morne National Park as part of the festival's "Writers in the Wild" event.  Other participants included John K. Samson (of the now-departed band The Weakerthans) and Christine Fellows, who sang in a field of cow parsnip, Newfoundland storyteller Andy Jones next to a bog and singer-songwriter Katie Baggs who played in a clearing as a bald eagle circled overhead.

This year, I was smart — it finally occurred to me that if I was the first one in, I could get out faster! It's a WAWP tradition to go for a swim in the frigid salt water of Bonne Bay with festival host Shelagh Rogers. It's a great energizer for the last night of WAWP. Writers Elizabeth Hay and Kathleen Winter were game. #reFRESHing

Photo by @tomcochrane

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On the last night of WAWP, we left the dance at the Legion (with the incredible Shane Murphy Band from Montreal) and walked to the end of Main Street to stand in a blueberry patch. It was so dark, I couldn't tell you who was standing next to me. Everyone was silent, possibly for the only time all week. Northern lights had made a surprise appearance, and the sky was filled with stars. It was a fitting end to a week of wonder and surprises. WAWP founder Stephen Brunt announced tonight that an anonymous donor had paid off the Theatre's mortgage, and asked that the building be renamed "The Shelagh Rogers Theatre."

Search #WAWP15 on Instagram to see more images from Writers at Woody Point.