Vancouver Writers Fest 2021

The Vancouver Writers Fest will feature 115 extraordinary local and international authors in a combination of in-person, digital, and hybrid events from October 18-24, 2021. Digital events are available to viewers in a pay-what-you-can model, and some of them will be streamed in a comfortable cinema setting at The Nest on Granville Island. 

Vancouver Writers Fest 2021

This year’s Guest Curator is Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize winner Lawrence Hill, who has arranged five events focused on Black and Indigenous writers. He will moderate a discussion about Caribbean literature with Cherie Jones and Myriam Chancy and interview award-winning poet Chantal Gibson. Other events feature some of the season’s hottest authors, including two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Esi Edugyan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr, Indigenous author and playwright Tomson Highway, and powerhouse authors such as Mona Awad, Zoe Whittall, Rachel Yoder, Ian Williams, Darrel McLeod, Maria Stepanova, and Colm Tóibín.

With free events for youth (and family) speaking to themes of cultural identity, inclusion, healing from grief, and Indigenous storytelling, and digital events featuring Jordan Abel in conversation with Tanya Talaga, award-winning young adult author Caroline Adderson and powerhouse duo Tom Ryan and Robin Stevenson, there’s plenty to see at this year’s Festival.

Event Highlights

Poetry Events: Poets in Conversation, Word! (for youth and adults this year), The Intricate Craft of Poetry, or The Poetry Bash.

Fiction Events: The Spectacular Complexity of Womanhood with Mona Awad, Zoe Whittall, and Rachel Yoder, Complex Histories (Gary Barwin and Kathleen Winter), Kaleidoscope (Brian Selznick), On The Trapline (David A. Robertson), Good Reads (Shashi Bhat, Jael Richardson, and Lisa Bird-Wilson), Hook, Line, and Sinker (Carrie Jenkins, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Sam Wiebe), Marvellous Stories for YA (Susin Nielsen and Peyton Thomas), Caribbean Masterpieces (Myriam Chancy and Cherie Jones) or Blending Genres with Hiromi Goto, Harold R. Johnson, and Renée Sarojini Saklikar.

Non-Fiction Events: Journeys For Home (Kamal Al-Solaylee and Marcello Di Cintio), Out of the Sun (Esi Edugyan), Jordan Abel in Conversation with Tanya Talaga, Saga Boy: Antonio Michael Downing in Conversation with Barbara Chirinos or It’s Not Too Late: How We Can Still Fight the Climate Crisis (Arno Kopecky and J.B. MacKinnon).

Find all of these events and more in the online Vancouver Writers Fest program.