Books & Ideas Audio

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 inti...

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...

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 winni...

“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....

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...

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 p...

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...

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 cou...

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 po...

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...