Presented in partnership with Pacific Salmon Foundation.
It’s been an unforgettable inaugural season of Books & Ideas—our pre-Festival literary and social series on Granville Island—and we’re honoured to close out the 2025 series in the company of bestselling author and celebrated naturalist Robert Macfarlane, who joins us with his vital new book, Is a River Alive?
At the heart of Is a River Alive? is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings, who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Around the world, rivers are dying from pollution, drought and damming. But a powerful “rights of nature” movement is underway to re-animate our relationships with these vast, mysterious presences whose landscapes we share. This young movement has lit up activists, artists, law-makers, and politicians across six continents—and become the focus for revolutionary thinking about rivers in particular. Macfarlane’s book flows like water on a mind-expanding journey through northern Ecuador, to southern India, to northeastern Quebec.
Is A River Alive? is at once a literary work of art, a rallying cry, and a catalyst for change. Macfarlane joins us and local environmental non-profit Pacific Salmon Foundation to discuss a radical re-imagination of not only rivers but life itself, in conversation with award-winning journalist Laura Lynch, host of CBC’s What on Earth radio show that explores solutions to climate change. Books will be for sale at the event from Upstart & Crow, with a book signing after the talk.