Books & Ideas Audio

Entrancing, surprising, and memorable: The Poetry Bash gathers some of our favourite poets from across the globe. This recording from our 2022 flagship Festival features Claudia Castro Luna  ( Cipota under the Moon ) sharing an ode to the Salvadoran immigrant experience in the United States;  Andrew Faulkner , who’s written a “buddy cop dramedy poetry collection” ( Heady Bloom ); New Zealand poet ...

Canadian writer, director, and actor  Sarah Polley  joined the Vancouver Writers Fest in celebration of her evocative release,  Run Towards the Danger . A complex and exquisite collection of essays, the book captures keystone moments in Polley’s life, as well as the “fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as t...

Two of the biggest names in literary historical fiction discuss race, humanity, and writing sweeping stories based on true events. Nadifa Mohamed ’s  The Fortune Men , based on the real story of a young Somali sailor accused of a crime he did not commit, was a finalist for the Booker Prize. Nathan Harris joined us with  The Sweetness of Water , depicting the bond between two brothers,&nb...

The long wait is over: John Rebus, detective inspector and the central protagonist of Edgar Award and Diamond Dagger recipient  Ian Rankin ’s acclaimed series, is back in  A Heart Full of Headstones . In this 24th book in the now televised series, Rankin brings new intrigue and suspense to the dark of Edinburgh, in what Publishers Weekly called “one of his best Rebus novels in years.” He...

In a television interview for CBC in the mid-60s, Mavis Gallant spoke of her love for mirrors—as objects, and as symbols. She refers to them often in her 120 short stories, almost all of which were published over a fifty year span in The New Yorker. Her legacy was even the inspiration behind Wes Anderson’s female journalist in The French Dispatch. Mavis Gallant was often interviewed; sometimes, sh...

Between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean lies the tiny island of Redonda. Uninhabitable by humans, Redonda is home instead to a variety of wildlife—including untold generations of seabirds that produce the island’s prized source of fertilizer. Though it might not seem like much, this peculiar island is the figurative home of a fantastical and international community of writers, with a high...

We all share a common humanity. No matter how long or difficult the path ahead, we are all one. Chief Robert Joseph , globally recognized peacebuilder and Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk People, joined the Vancouver Writers Fest in September to share his first book, Namwayut. In it, he traces his journey from his childhood surviving residential school to his present-day role as a leader who insp...

“If you love Doug’s fiction, this collection is like rain on the desert,” says the publisher of Douglas Coupland ’s first work of fiction since 2013, Binge. And certainly, for the millions of readers for whom Coupland’s existentialism, profundity, and hilarity was generation-defining, this is a welcome collection to devour. A collection of 60 stories featuring myriad characters—from the maudlin to...

This year, the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts holds its 40th annual festival from August 11–14, at the Rockwood Centre in Sechelt, BC. We sat down for a Q+A with Jane Davidson, Artistic and Executive Director of the Festival. Jane shares what makes this year's festival special, and reflects on some of her favourite memories and achievements from the past 15 years, as she prepares to p...

We’ve just recently released our 2022 Festival Reading List, filled with over 115 exceptional books and authors that will be joining the Vancouver Writers Fest from October 17–23. In this special episode of the Books & Ideas Audio podcast, Artistic Director Leslie Hurtig introduces the Reading List, and outlines the fascinating process of programming our October Festival, and the many consider...

If only there was a word for that sense of anticipation and delight that comes with opening the cover of a new thriller, knowing you’ll be spellbound for the next 300 pages. How do thriller writers create such suspense? Three different writers of mystery, thriller, and horror speak to how they create the propulsive books they do, in a conversation moderated by Rob Wiersema. Carrie Jenkins ’ debut...

Te-Ping Chen ’s debut fiction, Land of Big Numbers: Stories, is lauded by NPR as “as brilliant an instance of a journalist’s keen eye manifesting in luminous fiction as one can find.” Through piercing realism and tongue-in-cheek magic realism, it shares journeys of Chinese communities, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled into the present, where social mobility is extre...

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. Th...

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...

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, e...

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 b...

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 mytho...

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 t...

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, T...

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...

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 s...

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 a...

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, pow...

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, insig...

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 his...