2024 Festival:
October 21–27
Loading Events

Margaret Atwood in Conversation with Ian Williams

SOLD OUT

Part of the Vancouver Writers Fest Bestsellers Series

This event is presented in partnership with Scotia Wealth Management and with support from the Chan Endowment Fund at the University of British Columbia.

The legendary Margaret Atwood will join Scotiabank Giller Prize and Griffin Prize-winning author Ian Williams to discuss Old Babes in the Wood, her extraordinary new collection of short fiction. A cornerstone of Canada’s literary canon, Atwood is the author of over fifty books—including the internationally bestselling cultural phenomenon The Handmaid’s Tale, and the Booker Prize-winning novels The Blind Assassin and The Testaments. This book of 15 stories explores the full depth of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit, and intellect.

This is a conversation we’ll be reminiscing about for years to come.

Margaret Atwood has generously donated her fee for this event to the Vancouver Writers Fest, supporting our capacity to program this year’s 2023 Festival. We invite you to follow in the footsteps of this Canadian icon, and join us at the Bestsellers Series to help our Festival continue to thrive in challenging times.

Books will be for sale at the event courtesy of Book Warehouse, a division of Black Bond Books—including books pre-signed by Margaret Atwood! There will be no signing line.

This event is part of the Vancouver Writers Fest Bestsellers Series, a spring fundraising series bringing some of the biggest names in literature to Vancouver. Buying a ticket not only gives you an opportunity to hear from some of the most celebrated authors in the world; it supports the Vancouver Writers Fest in programming our flagship Festival later this year. Click here to explore the full lineup. 

Standard tickets: $35
Premium tickets: $55
Youth under 25: $20

Click here to purchase your tickets from The Chan Centre.

Tickets for this event are sold through The Chan Centre. If you run into issues while purchasing your ticket, please contact their box office directly:

Participants and Speakers

Margaret Atwood

MARGARET ATWOOD is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature.

Ian Williams

IAN WILLIAMS was born in Trinidad and raised in Canada. He won the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel, Reproduction. His poetry collection, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. Williams holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto and has recently returned as a tenured professor. His essay collection, Disorientation: Being Black in the World, was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize. His third poetry collection, Word Problems, was published by Coach House Press in the fall of 2020.