Each time Susan Orlean graces the Writers Fest with a visit, audiences are reminded why she is called “a national treasure” by The Washington Post. The New Yorker staff writer, and author of The Library Book joined us to celebrate her latest work—a collection of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals. “I think I’ll always have animals and I think I’ll always write about them. Their unknowability challenges me. Our affection for them intrigues me,” she explained, when...

Cherie Jones and Myriam Chancy have both written powerful, dynamic, disturbing novels about upheaval and injustice in the Caribbean. Jones, a Barbadian writer, took the world by storm with the publication of her debut novel How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House: an ambitious, layered novel in which her young Barbadian protagonist fights for her life. Chancy, who was born in Port-au-Prince and raised in Haiti and in Canada, teaches at Scripps College in California. Her new novel, What...

Of all the attributes Lauren Groff possesses, range is surely one of them. Her “all-conquering” 2015 novel, Fates and Furies, was a literary masterpiece about a modern day marriage, creativity, and perception. Florida brought storms, snakes, and sinkholes to lurk at the edges of everyday life in strange, affecting stories. And her latest work, Matrix, a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award, explores the raptures and hardships of life in a 12th century convent, as told by...

Omar El Akkad won the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel What Strange Paradise, a devastating yet beautiful story of two children against the backdrop of the refugee crisis, and the dehumanization of those who must flee home. The jury wrote: "Amid all the anger and confusion surrounding the global refugee crisis, Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise paints a portrait of displacement and belonging that is at once unflinching and tender. In examining the confluence of war, migration...

Antonio Michael Downing was raised by his indomitable grandmother in the lush rainforest of southern Trinidad, but—at age 11—is uprooted to Canada when she dies. He is sent to live with his stern, evangelical Aunt Joan in Wabigoon, a tiny northern Ontario community where he is one of only a few Black children in the town. His memoir, Saga Boy, is a creative, startling mash-up of memories and mythology as he shares the experience of growing up as an immigrant minority and longing for home....

As the world’s second-largest economy, China is extending its influence across the globe with the complicity of democratic nations. Internationally recognized reporter Joanna Chiu has spent a decade tracking China’s propulsive rise, from the political aspects of the multi-billion-dollar “New Silk Road” global investment project to a growing sway on foreign countries and multilateral institutions through “United Front” efforts. As the United States stumbles, Chiu’s anticipated work, China...

Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jordan Abel’s Nishga is a groundbreaking, deeply personal, and devastating autobiographical meditation that attempts to address the complicated legacies of Canada’s residential school system and contemporary Indigenous existence. It is necessary reading; an astounding work that explores some of the most pressing issues of our time. Journalist and award-winning author, Tanya Talaga, who has worked throughout her career to document and advocate for the need for...

Our Winter Book Club event featured award-winning actor and screenwriter Ethan Hawke for his novel, A Bright Ray of Darkness, moderated by Festival author and longtime podcast host Jen Sookfong Lee. As an accomplished actor, screenwriter, director and author, Ethan Hawke has commanded audiences for the screen, on the stage, and between the pages of some of this generation’s most memorable and evocative stories. A Bright Ray of Darkness, this master storyteller’s first novel in nearly twenty...

From the archives of the Vancouver Writers Fest: The memory of captivity is burned deep into the psyche of America, so it is no surprise that novelists continue to revisit the impact of slavery. Born in Ghana and raised in Alabama, Yaa Gyasi imagines how the force of slavery ricocheted through generations, beginning with two half-sisters in 18th century Ghana in her debut novel Homegoing. Lives shaped and misshaped by the historical force of slavery has been a 15-year fascination for Colson...

Originally recorded on October 23, 2015, Writing Country is a remarkable conversation with authors Roxane Gay, Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Marlon James and Viet Thanh Nguyen at the start of their illustrious careers. In conversation with Jared Bland, former Arts and Books editor for The Globe and Mail and publisher of McClelland & Stewart.  Known for literature that is firmly fixed in place and culture, these authors join Jared Bland to discuss depicting the soul of a country while also...

A renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has been lauded by many as one of the most compelling writers of her generation, as demonstrated by Islands of Decolonial Love, This Accident of Being Lost, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back and As We Have Always Done. Now, in Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, Betasamosake Simpson offers a book of wit, power, generosity and fierce insight or, as her publisher explains, “an act of decolonization,...

Writing Is What I Do: Walter Mosley’s work includes 43 critically acclaimed books, translated into 23 languages, and countless essays in prestigious magazines, not to mention influence over some of the biggest shows on our screens. One of the most celebrated writers in America today, he has been described as both “a writer whose work transcends category” (Time) and “one of the most humane, insightful, powerful prose stylists working in any genre. He’s also one of the most radical.” (Austin...

Is peace an aberration? As former president of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, explained, “only a historian with… comprehensive knowledge, command of sources, clarity of thought, and artful writing could succeed so brilliantly with one volume on this sweeping topic.” That historian is bestselling author, award-winning writer and exceptional researcher Margaret MacMillan, who brings modern history to millions of readers with clarity and insight. Her latest work, War, looks at the ways in...

Man Booker finalist Emma Donoghue is an undeniable sensation who shot to acclaim for penning both the novel and screenplay for Room. Since then, the author has lived with a foot in both worlds, turning her bestselling books into equally coveted scripts. What do you learn about your work as it transforms into new mediums? Has writing for Hollywood changed her approach to writing novels? In an intimate evening, this hilarious bestselling author shares her new novel, Akin, in which a retired...

Time to break out your headphones! In a truly special event and conversation available exclusively through the Festival’s Books & Ideas Audio series, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, Marilynne Robinson, sits with 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner and national bestselling author Ian Williams to discuss her widely anticipated new novel Jack, the fourth and last of her Gilead quartet. In this timely conclusion, Jack harkens...

Three Freeman’s contributors from three different genres, born on three different continents, talk about the way love makes a story, a poem, and the shape of a memoir. Mieko Kawakami is the award winning author of Breasts & Eggs, her North American debut, and is declared by Haruki Murakami as his favorite new Japanese novelist; Daniel Mendelsohn is the National Book Critics Circle Award winning author of The Lost, translator of poems of Cavafy, and his latest genre bending tale, Three...

“The weight of politics in our country had coalesced and summoned a response out of me,” said Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Pakistani American novelist, playwright and screenwriter explained of his latest work, Homeland Elegies. Is it, he wondered, possible to write a letter to America in such a time—a letter to all Americans? Judging by the acclaim for this title, the answer is Yes. The story of the son of an immigrant father who searches for belonging in post-Trump America has...

For nearly two decades, Beverley McLachlin served as the Chief Justice of Canada, the longest serving Chief Justice in Canadian history and the first woman to hold the position. In a special conversation with Laura Lynch, McLachlin speaks to her memoir, Truth Be Told: My Journey Through Life and the Law, inviting Canadians into her childhood in the rural prairies, the defining moments that shaped her sense of justice and behind the bench during some of the most contentious Supreme Court...

Elif Batuman, Mona Awad and Anakana Schofield delight in a sold-out evening of whip-smart, hilarious and unapologetically audacious conversation, a highlight from the 2019 season of the Vancouver Writers Fest. MFA student Samantha falls down a surreal rabbit hole, captivated by a mysterious cult in Awad’s Bunny. Wry and laugh out loud funny, Elif Batuman’s Pulitzer Prize finalist The Idiot was praised as “addictive” by Miranda July. Giller Prize shortlisted Anakana Schofield balances black...

Award-winning journalist, author and CBC Massey Lecturer Tanya Talaga's Seven Fallen Feathers investigated the startling deaths of seven Indigenous students in Thunder Bay. Her research has won prestigious awards and, perhaps most importantly, garnered widespread public awareness. In a 2019 conversation with Festival of Literary Diversity Artistic Director Jael Richardson, Talaga discusses these difficult but necessary investigations, the challenge of writing for change and how she continues...

Award-winning journalist Desmond Cole’s The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power has been an incisive and revealing work on policing, racial profiling, antiblackness and Indigenous injustice in Canada. While addressing bias, ignorance and willful disregard from those in power, the book heralds the deeply inclusive leadership of #BlackLivesMatterTO and Black activists across the country. Originally recorded February 19, 2020, Cole was joined by Vancouver Arts curator and...

The Handmaid's Tale author and global sensation Margaret Atwood joins celebrated author Cherie Dimaline to discuss The Testaments, writing process and place in an exceptional event recorded at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts. In a conversation that reached far beyond the borders of Gilead, this event was like no other with Ms. Atwood; one that touched on a myriad of topics, from personal to political. In a brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood answers questions that have...

International bestseller author Malcolm Gladwell sits down with CBC Host Lisa Christiansen in a gripping discussion of history, psychology and scandal, bringing to light how bad we are at making sense of people. Originally recorded at The Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, BC.

Lindy West is known for her fierce, funny and forthright analyses of contemporary culture. During a special event at the Vancouver Writers Fest, West speaks with Secret Feminist Agenda host and professor Hannah McGregor about her instant bestseller The Witches Are Coming, feminism, misogyny and meme culture.

By combining African history, mythology and his own rich imagination, Man Booker prize winning author Marlon James captivated the world with his bestselling fantasy novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf. In a conversation with Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Ian Williams, James shares his theories on writing across genres, the importance of reading diversely, and how stories live on in the minds of readers long after a writer’s work has finished.  Originally recorded on February 17, 2019 at...