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.
- Truth Telling by Michelle Good – added June 27
- Pictures on the Wall by Michael Audain – added June 28
- Fire Weather by John Vaillant – added June 28
- The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff – added June 28
- How to Be a Climate Optimist by Chris Turner – added July 4
- Landbridge: Life in Fragments by Y-Dang Troeung (1980–2022; posthumously presented and honoured) – added July 7
- Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility edited by Rebecca Solnit – added July 12
- The Grover School Pledge by Wanda Taylor – added July 12
- Where Do Your Feelings Live? by Catherine Hernandez – added July 12
- The Compassionate Imagination: How the Arts Are Central to a Functioning Democracy by Max Wyman – added July 13
- Races: The Trials and Triumphs of Canada’s Fastest Family by Valerie Jerome – added July 13
- All Things Move: Learning to Look in the Sistine Chapel by Jeannie Marshall – added July 13
- Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor – added July 14
- On Browsing by Jason Guriel – added July 18
- The Boy Who Woke the Sun by A.T. Woodley – added July 18
- This Other Eden by Paul Harding – added July 19
- The Future by Catherine Leroux – added July 19
- Garden of Lost Socks by Esi Edugyan – added July 21
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.
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!