For the first time ever, gain access to a mastercut of the Vancouver Writers Fest’s October Festival!
New extended dates: Access the Digital Festival from December 6 to January 20!
The deadline to purchase a Digital Festival Pass is midnight on Friday, January 13.
This October, we gathered on Granville Island for the 35th Anniversary Festival. We were overwhelmed by the response to our first fully in-person Festival after three years. The warmth of the audiences and the powerful conversations that took place on our stages were captured on camera so that we could share the magic of this week with as many people as possible. The result is this Digital Festival Release: 30 specially curated events, many previously sold out, representing some of the most intriguing, edifying, and fun offerings from our 2022 Festival, available online from December 6 through January 20.
We hope these events will reach people far and wide—and also solve the eternal problem of not being able to be in two places at once during Festival Week.
Please enjoy these exceptional books, ideas, and dialogue!
Pay-What-You-Can for this all-access pass: $0 – $20 – $100 [recommended] – $250
We offer Pay-What-You-Can options for the Digital Festival so that these exceptional conversations can be available to everyone. If you don’t see the amount you’d like to pay listed as an option, please consider adding a donation at checkout, to help us continue to make our programming accessible.
While the deadline has passed to purchase a Digital Festival Gift Pass that comes with a festive gift certificate, you can still purchase a regular Digital Festival Pass as a gift, and send your recipient the access code that you receive in your purchase receipt email.
The Digital Festival is presented thanks to the generous support of the Y.P. Heung Foundation.
30 fully-captioned events from the 2022 Festival are included in this all-access, pay-what-you-can pass:
#01: Educating with the Witness Blanket (High School)
featuring Carey Newman and Kirstie Hudson
#02: Sisters in Resistance
Tilar J. Mazzeo in Conversation with Marsha Lederman
#03: What Home Means
featuring Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Omar El Akkad, Dimitri Nasrallah, and Debra Thompson
#04: Ali Hassan in Conversation with Brent Butt
#05: Friendship and Fitting In (Grades 4–7)
featuring Johnnie Christmas, Faith Erin Hicks, and Jonathan Hill
#06: An Evening with Wayne Johnston
hosted by Rob Wiersema
#07: Freeman’s Spotlight
featuring Tess Gunty and John Freeman
#08: Fabulous Historical Fantasy
featuring Guy Gavriel Kay, J.M. Miro (Steven Price), and Rob Wiersema
#09: An Evening with Billy-Ray Belcourt
hosted by Mercedes Eng
#10: Short Story Masters
featuring Caroline Adderson, Jonathan Escoffery, Kim Fu, and Alexander MacLeod
#11: The Power of Story: Live Recording for CBC’s The Next Chapter
featuring Brian Thomas Isaac, Marsha Lederman, David A. Robertson, and Shelagh Rogers
#12: Fiction from Reality
featuring Violaine Huisman, Aislinn Hunter, Gabriel Krauze, and Douglas Stuart
#13: Don’t You Want Me, Baby?: Authors Do 80s Lyrics
featuring Heather O’Neill, Omar El Akkad, João Reis, Brendan McLeod, Kevin Sylvester, Marsha Lederman, Iain Reid, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Kern Carter, David A. Robertson, and Tess Gunty; hosted by Elamin Abdelmahmoud
#14: A Gallant Day: The Great Coincidence of August 11
featuring Aamina Ahmad, Ivan Coyote, Veda Hille, Bill Richardson, and Marcus Youssef
#15: The Truth Ain’t What It Used To Be: Journalism in the 21st Century
featuring Kamal Al-Solaylee, Omar El Akkad, Brandi Morin, Elizabeth Renzetti, and Andrea Woo
#16: Generational Fiction: Stories of Lineage, History and Things Passed Down
featuring Aamina Ahmad, Tsering Yangzom Lama, Marsha Lederman, and Jasmine Sealy
#17: Douglas Stuart in Conversation with Eddy Boudel Tan
#18: Poems for the Twelfth Hour
featuring Otoniya Okot Bitek, John Freeman, Aislinn Hunter, Gillian Jerome, Brendan McLeod, and Cecily Nicholson
#19: An Evening with Heather O’Neill
hosted by Jen Sookfong Lee
#20: Queer Little Nightmares
featuring jaye simpson, Amber Dawn, Eddy Boudel Tan, Tin Lorica, Ben Rawluk, Jane Shi, Cicely Belle Blain, and beni xiao, with a drag performance by Persephone. Hosted by David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli.
#21: Bestseller to Blockbuster
featuring Marsha Lederman, Tom Perrotta, and Iain Reid
#22: Wildness: Stories for an Unraveling World
featuring Madhur Anand, Omar El Akkad, Kim Fu, and John Elizabeth Stintzi
#23: Building Suspense
featuring Linwood Barclay, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Jerry Wasserman, and Sandra SG Wong
#24: The State of Women
featuring Eliza Reid and Elizabeth Renzetti
#25: American Debuts: Emerging Authors, Exceptional Tales
featuring Aamina Ahmad, Jonathan Escoffery, Shaena Lambert, and Soon Wiley
#26: An Evening with Elif Batuman
hosted by Anakana Schofield
#27: The Literary Cabaret
featuring Graeme Macrae Burnet, Pierre Jarawan, Gabriel Krauze, Nadifa Mohamed, and Heather O’Neill; music accompaniment by Sally Zori and the Allegories
#28: The Crime [Writing] of the Century:
Linwood Barclay and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir in Conversation, hosted by Rob Wiersema
#29: The Future is Now, with Bob McDonald
#30: Dr. Gabor Maté in Conversation
hosted by Andrea Woo