2024 Festival:
October 21–27

Welcome to our 2023 Festival Reading List

The Reading List represents over 100 authors who will be joining us at our flagship Festival, taking place this year from October 16–22. Our home on Granville Island will come alive with the stories and minds of the world’s most compelling authors, both at home and abroad, including emerging voices not-to-be-missed.

Click the button below to dive into the new, interactive list! Search by title or author, filter by genre, or browse the full list. Click on any book cover to learn more about the book and author.

If you would prefer to access a simple text version of the Reading List,  you can download it as a Word Doc or access it as a Google Doc.

New Additions

The Reading List is updated regularly with new additions—check back frequently or subscribe to our newsletter for updates!

Regrets:

Marie NDiaye will no longer be joining this year’s Festival.

2023 Guest Curator
ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD joins us as our 2023 Guest Curator for five events! The host of CBC Radio’s Commotion, Elamin’s signature vibrancy and enthusiasm pervades in panel discussions on issues including the precariousness of our current state; using pop culture to tell our own stories; Blackness as a portal; and tangling with cultural inheritance.

A former writer for BuzzFeed News, Elamin’s work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Rolling Stone, and others.  He is the author of Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces—a number one national bestseller, a Globe 100 book, and a New York Times notable book.

Official Bookseller

These books are available from our Official Bookseller Book Warehouse, a division of Black Bond Books.

Looking for audiobooks? Check out our 2023 Festival Playlist on Libro.fm. Sign up for a Libro.fm account in support of the Vancouver Writers Fest, and a portion of the sales for every book you purchase will be shared with us!