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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240417T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240417T200000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20240320T205856Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240322T195831Z
UID:10000286-1713380400-1713384000@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: All About Love
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.\n \nThis Incite event is all about love—romantic\, familial\, tender\, fierce\, gut-wrenching\, and wondrous love. Three LGBTQ+ authors join us on-stage to discuss their highly anticipated novels\, which boldly explore love in all its expressions. \nIn Christina Cooke’s searing debut novel\, Broughtupsy\, Akúa returns home to Jamaica for the first time in ten years and is forced to confront the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family\, and of what it means to feel at home. \nAnne Fleming’s Curiosities is a genre- and gender-bending historical novel with a modern twist. We follow a present-day amateur historian\, Anne\, as she pieces together seventeenth-century manuscripts that tell conflicting stories about two lovers\, living in a time when there were no labels for who they might truly be. \nWhat if you had the chance to rewrite the course of your relationship\, again and again\, in the hopes that it would work out? Myriam Lacroix’s How It Works Out explores just this\, as a queer love story plays out in many alternate realities to paint a darkly comic portrait of love’s many promises and perils. \nJoin us for a vivacious conversation\, as the authors sit down to discuss their books with author Candie Tanaka.  \nBooks will be for sale at the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. Can’t make the event time? Register for the livestream option and we’ll send you a link to watch the recording!  \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-love
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2024_Incite-04-17_social-banner-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240320T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240320T200000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20240227T223413Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240301T223434Z
UID:10000281-1710961200-1710964800@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Cozy Mystery with Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.\n \nLooking for a murder mystery to spark that warm\, fuzzy feeling inside? Featuring amateur detectives\, fascinating supporting casts\, and a focus on solving clues over violence and gloom\, cozy mysteries have taken the publishing world by storm. Hear from some of the best in the genre at this Incite event with Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti\, authors of Bury the Lead.  \nBury the Lead follows Cat Conway\, a big-city journalist who’s recently fled her high-profile career to join the staff of a paper in cottage country. One of her first assignments is to interview legendary actor Eliot Fraser. When Eliot ends up dead onstage on the theatre’s opening night\, the curtain rises on the sleepy town’s secrets. Can Cat solve the mystery before she loses her job or becomes the next victim of a killer with a theatrical bent for vengeance? \nFor fans of Louise Penny\, Agatha Christie\, and Only Murders in the Building\, this intimate event is not to be missed. Both bestselling and acclaimed authors for their previous works\, Hilton and Renzetti will speak with Globe and Mail journalist and author André Picard.   \nBooks will be for sale at the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. Can’t make the event time? Register for the livestream option and we’ll send you a link to watch the recording!  \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-mystery
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024_Incite-03-20_social-banner.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240306T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240306T200000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20240216T190217Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T224940Z
UID:10000280-1709751600-1709755200@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Divine Debut Fiction with Lily Wang and Scott Alexander Howard
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.\n \nDebut novelists Lily Wang and Scott Alexander Howard unveil moving works of literary fiction that will enchant readers with exquisite prose\, and a touch of the otherworldly. Explore threads of memory\, longing\, loss\, and the surreal at this Incite event.   \nLily Wang’s Silver Repetition tenderly illuminates the fullness of identity despite fractures in language\, culture\, and relationships. Having left China for Canada with her parents as a child\, Yuè Yuè yearns to discover who she is as she nears the end of her degree and starts a new relationship. In urgent poetic fragments\, she seeks common ground with her Canadian-born younger sister and grieves the cousin she lost touch with back home. \nFor fans of Emily St. John Mandel\, David Mitchell\, and Kazuo Ishiguro\, The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard is a literary speculative novel set in an unnamed valley\, where bereaved residents can petition to cross a forbidden border to see their lost loved ones again. This masterful modern fable has been called “unforgettable” (Kevin Chong) and “astonishingly brilliant” (Liz Nugent).   \nOur guests will speak with Tara McGuire\, author of the moving memoir Holden After & Before.   \nBooks will be for sale at the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. Can’t make the event time? Register for the livestream option and we’ll send you a link to watch the recording!  \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-debuts
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024_Incite-03-06_social-banner.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240221T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240221T200000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20240201T170055Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240131T235757Z
UID:10000277-1708542000-1708545600@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Sheila Heti in Conversation
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.\n \nLiterary innovator Sheila Heti—known for experimental and philosophical books such as Motherhood\, Pure Colour\, and How Should a Person Be?—returns to Incite with what might be her most intimate work yet. Discover ten years of her diaries\, curiously rearranged in Alphabetical Diaries. \nA little over a decade ago\, Heti began looking back at the diaries she’d kept over the previous ten years\, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She loaded all 500\,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel\, to order the sentences alphabetically and seek out patterns and repetitions. With the sentences untethered from the narrative of her diaries\, she started to see herself—and the Self—in a new way. The result is something fresh and sublime.  \nThe New York Times called reading Alphabetical Diaries “a profound experience.” Experience it for yourself at this insightful conversation between Heti and author Molly Cross-Blanchard.  \nBooks will be for sale at the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. Can’t make the event time? Register for the livestream option and we’ll send you a link to watch the recording!  \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-heti
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2024_Incite-02-21_social-banner.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240207T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240207T200000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20240127T010021Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240126T193442Z
UID:10000276-1707332400-1707336000@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: CBC’s Canada Reads – Téa Mutonji and Kudakwashe Rutendo
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library and CBC’s Canada Reads.\n \nCanada Reads is back! The annual battle of the books is a lively debate between five champions\, who each defend one book as the title the whole country should read this year. Celebrate this year’s contenders at Incite\, where finalist Téa Mutonji will sit down with her champion\, actor and TIFF Rising Star Kudakwashe Rutendo.  \nIn Shut Up You’re Pretty\, Mutonji’s disarming debut story collection\, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding; a teenage girl looks for happiness inside a pack of cigarettes; a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish; and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. On CBC Radio’s Commotion\, Rutendo commented: “At once feminist\, unapologetic and potent\, Shut Up You’re Pretty presents the opportunity to reconcile what we’ve been carrying at a time when it couldn’t be more needed.” \nCanada Reads finalists become national bestsellers. Come meet two emerging Canadian icons.  \nBooks will be for sale at the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. Can’t make the event time? Register for the livestream option and we’ll send you a link to watch the recording!  \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-mutonji
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2024_Incite-02-07_social-banner.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240124T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20240124T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20240108T211332Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240115T204850Z
UID:10000275-1706122800-1706128200@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Deb Perelman in Conversation
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.  \nGet inspired in the kitchen with Deb Perelman\, a self-taught home cook and the force behind SmittenKitchen.com. An international sensation among home cooks\, Perelman has authored three New York Times bestselling cookbooks\, most recently Smitten Kitchen Keepers\, and has amassed over 2.7 million followers worldwide for her comforting\, accessible recipes. For our very first Incite of the season\, Perelman will share ‘seasoned’ insights from the kitchen and her career. We know you’ll be smitten. In conversation with Bronwen Tate. \nCopies of Deb Perelman’s books will be available for sale before and after the event courtesy of Blackbond Books | Book Warehouse. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-perelman
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Incite_2024-01_soldout.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230531T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230531T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20230503T163023Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230530T195733Z
UID:10000261-1685559600-1685565000@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Fire Weather – John Vaillant
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.\nMasks are optional in VPL’s spaces.  \nThe 2023 Incite season finale is sure to be one of our most riveting\, incandescent events yet. John Vaillant\, author of the nationally bestselling non-fiction titles The Golden Spruce and The Tiger\, joins us with his latest work—a stunning account of a colossal wildfire\, and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind. He’ll speak with award-winning journalist Laura Lynch\, host of CBC’s What On Earth. \nFire Weather: The Making of a Beast takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science. In May 2016\, Fort McMurray\, the hub of Canada’s petroleum industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier\, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster drove 88\,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter\, more flammable world. \nJoin us for an urgent and necessary conversation about our new century of fire\, which has only just begun. \nBooks will be for sale before and after the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-vaillant
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023-Incite_social_05-31_banner-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230503T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230503T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20230419T163041Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230419T164917Z
UID:10000258-1683140400-1683145800@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: BC and Yukon Book Prizes
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library and BC and Yukon Book Prizes.  \nWe’re partnering with the BC and Yukon Book Prizes for an evening of celebrating our dazzling local literary talent. This free Incite event will honour three of the shortlisted authors of the 2023 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize\, awarded to the best work of literary fiction by a BC writer. \nThe event features: \n\nBilly-Ray Belcourt\, Griffin Poetry Prize-winning author from the Driftpile Cree Nation\, nominated for A Minor Chorus\nMarion Ehrenberg\, psychologist\, professor\, and writer\, nominated for The Language of Dreams\nDanny Ramadan\, Syrian-Canadian author and advocate for LGBTQ+ refugees\, nominated for The Foghorn Echoes \n\nThe authors will discuss their shortlisted titles\, and then have a rousing conversation about the writing process with Vancouver Writers Fest Artistic Director Leslie Hurtig. \nOther nominees for this year’s award\, who are unfortunately unable to join us this evening\, are Tsering Yangzom Lama and Janice Lynn Mather. \nPrevious winners of the Ethel Wilson Prize have included Ruth Ozeki (The Book of Form and Emptiness)\, Eden Robinson (Trickster Drift)\, and David Chariandy (Brother). Come and meet your next favourite author\, and get a signed copy of their book\, at Incite! \nBooks will be for sale before and after the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-bcybp
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-Incite_social_05-03_banner-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230405T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230405T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20230310T230049Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230310T025108Z
UID:10000249-1680721200-1680726600@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Poetry for This World
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.  \nThough T.S. Eliot called April the “cruelest month”\, at least we have the indomitable power of poetry to carry us through. Celebrate National Poetry Month with readings and musings from poets whose new collections will provoke\, console\, and reveal other ways of seeing. \nTrinity Street is the much-anticipated fifth collection from poet Jen Currin\, winner of the Audre Lorde Award and a Lambda finalist. Weaving together the meditative and the disruptive\, the queer and quotidian\, and the worlds of the dead and the living\, Currin’s poems vibrate with unexpected shifts and precise\, startling imagery. \nMétis Ukrainian\, ReLit Award-winning writer Conor Kerr’s sharp and incisive poems move restlessly across landscapes and time. Old Gods defies colonialism on the Prairies\, situating readers in the Métis mindset: the old gods of the land are alive within the rivers\, the birds\, the hills and the prairies that surround us\, and they’ll always be here. \nSheryda Warrener is the author of two previous collections\, and a recipient of The Puritan‘s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for poetry. The poems in Test Piece began from her impulse to see herself more clearly\, and grew into more expansive meditations on seeing and vision. These poems are informed by collage—with their echoes and reverberations\, a greater complexity is revealed. \nThey’re joined by host Bronwen Tate—author of the poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore\, and professor and Undergraduate Chair at the School of Creative Writing at UBC—for a thoughtful conversation about the power of poetry to challenge and help explain the world we live in. \nBooks will be for sale before and after the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-poetry-2023
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-Incite_social_04-05_banner.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230322T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230322T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20230225T000007Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230224T202117Z
UID:10000248-1679511600-1679517000@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: On the Ravine: Vincent Lam
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.  \nGiller Prize-winning author Dr. Vincent Lam joins our distinguished 2023 Incite lineup with a novel that casts an insightful\, urgent\, and intimate eye upon the devastating experience of addiction. \nIn his practice as an emergency physician and addictions physician\, as well as the medical director of Coderix Medical Clinic\, an addictions medicine clinic based in downtown Toronto\, Dr. Lam is a first-hand witness to the staggering impact of opioid addictions—an epidemic that claimed the lives of over 11\,500 Canadians between January 2016 and December 2018[1]. On the Ravine combines the depth of his experience with his literary talent to create a gripping novel of profound emotional force\, electric in its precision and radiant in its detail\, where the paths of a doctor and patient intersect in complex\, life-altering ways. \nRSVP for free to hear Lam in conversation with physician Daniel Kalla\, the internationally bestselling author of novels such as The Darkness in the Light\, Lost Immunity\, and the forthcoming book Fit to Die. Books will be for sale before and after the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. \n[1] Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. https://www.ccsa.ca/opioids \n  \nABOUT THE BOOK \nIn his downtown Toronto condo\, Dr. Chen awakens to the sound of streetcars below\, but it is not the early morning traffic that keeps him from sleep. News banners run across his phone: Fentanyl Crisis; Toxic Drug Supply; Record Number of Deaths. From behind the headlines\, on the same screen\, glow the faces of his patients\, the faces of the what-ifs: What if he had done more\, or less? Or something different? Would they still be alive? \nClaire is a violinist; she feels at one with her music\, taking flight in its melody\, free in its movement. But now she rises and falls with the opioids in her system\, becoming increasingly reckless. After two overdoses in twenty-four hours\, she sits in the blue light of her computer\, searching a notice board for recommendations: my doctor saved my life; my doctor is just another dealer. And then another message catches her attention\, about Chen’s clinic: be a guinea pig—why not get paid to take it? \nWhen Claire’s life intersects with Chen’s\, the doctor is drawn ever more deeply into the complexities of the doctor-patient relationship\, the implication and meaning of his intention to treat. Chen must confront just how far he would go to save a life. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-lam
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023-Incite_social_03-22_banner.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230308T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230308T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20230210T231945Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230210T233756Z
UID:10000246-1678302000-1678307400@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Women Forging Trails
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.  \nOn International Women’s Day\, March 8\, hear the gritty\, inspiring stories of two women who blazed their own paths in two very different industries\, both traditionally dominated by men. \nAs a whitewater guide navigating some of the most challenging and remote rafting rivers in North America\, Tamar Glouberman takes us on a thrilling\, vulnerable journey in her memoir\, Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life. Traversing the highs and lows of the rapids\, this is a story that “expertly tackles themes of sexism\, mental health\, and what it means to trust in yourself in a world that rocks that boat.” (Kelly S. Thompson\, author of Girls Need Not Apply) \nThick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister In The Brotherhood is a deep dive into the secret language and hidden culture of one of the most esoteric heavy construction trades—Boilermaking—from Hilary Peach\, who worked for over two decades as one of the only women in the Boilermakers Union. By turns tender and hilarious\, Peach’s style shines “as brightly as a welder’s torch\, seaming disparate pieces of the universe together.” (The British Columbia Review) \nThey’re joined on-stage by Charmaine de Silva\, News Director of CityNews Vancouver and Calgary. A three-time National RTDNA award-winner and one of Vanmag’s 50 most powerful people in Vancouver in 2023\, she brings her own perspective as the leader of an innovative and diverse newsroom\, to a conversation that promises to be raw and real. \nBooks will be for sale before and after the event courtesy of Book Warehouse\, a division of Black Bond Books. \n  \nABOUT THE BOOKS \nChasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life \nWhen wilderness guide Tamar Glouberman was in her twenties and thirties\, rivers were flowing through every aspect of her life. Whitewater and the paddling community brought excitement\, friendships\, lovers and a connection to the natural world. Driven to guide increasingly dangerous rivers\, Tamar overcomes her self-doubt and challenges both on and off the water\, using a combination of grit and wit. But when a rafting trip ends in a fatal accident\, she is consumed by guilt and exiles herself from the rivers she loves\, convinced she can never return. Tamar must eventually decide if being unable to save her passenger’s life means she also must sacrifice her own. \nThick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood \nFor more than two decades\, Hilary Peach worked as a transient welder – and one of the only women — in the Boilermakers Union. Distilled from a vast cache of journals\, notes\, and keen observations\, Thick Skin follows Peach from the West Coast shipyards and pulp mills of British Columbia\, through the Alberta tar sands and the Ontario rust belt\, to the colossal power generating stations of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. At times edging up to the surreal\, Thick Skin is a collection of strange stories carefully told\, in tenderness and ferocity\, for anyone who has spent time in a trade\, or is curious about the unseen world of industrial construction. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-womens-day
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://writersfest.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023-Incite_social_03-08_banner-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230222T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230222T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20230123T222032Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230125T203139Z
UID:10000162-1677092400-1677097800@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: VenCo: Cherie Dimaline
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library and Massy Books.  \nDon your cloaks and gather with other members of our literary coven for an evening of divine storytelling and witchcraft. Our third Incite event features Festival favourite Cherie Dimaline\, whose book The Marrow Thieves has garnered multiple awards and maintained an astonishingly frequent presence on the Canadian bestseller’s list for the past five years. Her latest novel for adults invites readers on an enchanting\, treacherous road trip adventure that will “bring magic back into your life” (Eden Robinson). \nVenCo is a wickedly subversive\, deliciously imaginative\, deeply feminist novel of contemporary witches on the rise. When Métis millennial Lucky St. James finds a spoon in her basement inscribed with the letters S-A-L-E-M\, she joins a network of extraordinary women across North America who are searching desperately for the final spoon—and the unknown witch who holds it. The Kirkus Prize and Governor General’s Literary Award winning author joins author and academic Billy-Ray Belcourt (A History of My Brief Body\, A Minor Chorus) to discuss her spellbinding new book\, and her prolific and varied writing life. \nBooks will be for sale before and after the event courtesy of Massy Books. \n  \nFROM THE PUBLISHER \nFrom the bestselling author of Empire of Wild\, a wickedly subversive\, deliciously imaginative\, deeply feminist novel of contemporary witches on the rise—a book that only the supremely gifted storyteller Cherie Dimaline could write. \nLucky St. James\, orphaned daughter of a bad-ass Métis good-times girl\, is barely hanging on to her nowhere life when she finds out that she and her grandmother\, Stella\, are about to be evicted from their apartment. Bad to worse in a heartbeat. Then one night\, doing laundry in the building’s dank basement\, Lucky feels an irresistible something calling to her. Crawling through a hidden hole in the wall\, she finds a tarnished silver spoon depicting a story-book hag over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M. \nWhich alerts Salem-born Meena Good\, finder of a matching spoon\, to Lucky’s existence. One of the most powerful witches in North America\, Meena has been called to bring together seven special witches and seven special spoons—infused with magic and scattered to the four directions more than a century ago—to form a magic circle that will restore women to their rightful power. Under the wing of the international headhunting firm VenCo\, devoted to placing exceptional women in roles where they can influence business\, politics and the arts\, Meena has spent years searching out witches hiding in plain sight wherever women gather: suburban book clubs\, Mommy & Me groups\, temp agencies. Lucky and her spoon are number six. \nWith only one more spoon to find\, a very powerful adversary has Meena’s coven in his sights—Jay Christos\, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself. As the clock ticks toward a now-or-never deadline\, Meena sends Lucky and her grandmother on a dangerous\, sometimes hilarious\, road trip through the United States in search of the seventh spoon. The trail leads them at last to the darkly magical city of New Orleans\, where Lucky’s final showdown with Jay Christos will determine whether the coven will be completed\, ushering in a new beginning\, or whether witches will be forced to remain forever underground. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. 
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-dimaline
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230208T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230208T203000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20230104T203052Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230116T201632Z
UID:10000160-1675882800-1675888200@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Superfan: Jen Sookfong Lee
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library.  \nMusic. Movies. Celebrity crushes. Pop culture permeates all levels of our lives\, from the entertainment we consume (or abhor) to the memes we make and share with friends. Jen Sookfong Lee has been at the centre of this commentary for years\, as author\, lifestyle commentator\, podcaster\, and now memoirist of Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart\, a searing\, revelatory\, and intimate collection exploring the ways in which pop culture has shaped—and unshaped—Lee throughout her life. \nJoined by longtime Festival friend and Globe and Mail columnist Marsha Lederman\, this special Incite event will celebrate Lee’s debut memoir-in-pieces\, and explore all the ways in which pop culture intersects with the reality of so many\, how our collective obsessions make and break us\, and why our fascinations persist in spite of it all. \n  \nFROM THE PUBLISHER \nA sharply observed and beautifully intimate memoir-in-pieces that uses one woman’s life-long love affair with pop culture as a revelatory lens to explore family\, identity\, belonging\, grief\, and the power of female rage. \nFor most of Jen Sookfong Lee’s life\, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that\, despite losing her father at the age of twelve\, one day she might still have the loving family of her dreams. Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up\, she began to recognize the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her—the child of Chinese immigrant parents who looked for safety in the invisibility afforded by embracing model minority myths. \nRanging from the unattainable perfection of Gwyneth Paltrow and the father-figure familiarity of Bob Ross\, to the long shadow cast by The Joy Luck Club and the life lessons she has learned from Rihanna\, Jen weaves together key moments in pop culture with stories of her own failings\, longings\, and struggles as she navigates the minefields that come with carving her own path as an Asian woman\, single mother\, and writer. And with great wit\, bracing honesty\, and a deep appreciation for the ways culture shapes us\, she draws direct lines between the spectacle of the popular\, the intimacy of our personal bonds\, and the social foundations of our collective obsessions. \nJoin us for Incite all season\, in-person or online! This readings series offers conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents every two weeks from January to June. Incite is free and open to all. Books will be for sale courtesy of Book Warehouse (a division of Black Bond Books).
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-jen-sookfong-lee
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220601T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220601T190000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20220520T210012Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220520T174017Z
UID:10000242-1654110000-1654110000@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: BC and Yukon Book Prizes
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library and TELUS. \nIt’s award season in BC! Join us for a celebratory night with six of the 2022 BC and Yukon Book Prize finalists from five prestigious award categories. Moderated by Megan Cole\, the Prize’s Director of Programming and Communications\, this much-anticipated panel will feature: \n\nIona Whishaw\, nominated for the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award for A Lethal Lesson: A Lane Winslow Mystery (TouchWood Editions)\nHenry Doyle\, nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for No Shelter (Anvil Press)\nCedar Bowers\, nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for Astra (McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House Canada)\nNicola I. Campbell\, nominated for the Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes for Spíləx̣m: A Weaving of Recovery\, Resilience\, and Resurgence (Highwater Press)\nKaren Duffek and kwəskwestən\, nominated for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize for Where the Power Is (Figure 1 Publishing)\n\nThis event will feature the finalists reading from their books\, as well as an audience Q&A. The finalists will be announced at a gala in Vancouver on September 24. \nIncite events are free and open to the public\, but an RSVP is required. Books will be on sale at the event from our official bookseller\, Black Bond Books/Book Warehouse. \nThis event can be attended in-person or online. At checkout\, we will ask you if you plan to join us online or in-person.  \nThe Vancouver Writers Fest encourages patrons to wear face masks at its events. While not currently mandated by the BC health authority\, face masks continue to offer assurance and safety for many of the communities the VWF serves. We thank you for your understanding and consideration.
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-june-1
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event,Digital,Theatre
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220518T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220518T190000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20220429T220052Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220428T235720Z
UID:10000239-1652900400-1652900400@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Fiction as a Tempest
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library and TELUS. \nThis spring brings rare talents and heart-rending prose in the form of Janice Lynn Mather’s explosive short story collection Uncertain Kin (Doubleday Canada) and Tsering Yangzom Lama’s impassioned debut novel\, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies (McClelland & Stewart). Joined by moderator Eddy Boudel Tan\, author of The Rebellious Tide (Dundurn Press)\, our final May Incite will feature an absorbing conversation on relationships\, displacement and longing\, as well as all of the minute and miraculous ways we find ourselves in the world. \nAbout the Books \nWe Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama \nA haunting first novel that recounts a Tibetan family’s fifty-year journey through exile and their struggles to forge new lives of dignity\, love\, and hope. Named one of Publisher Weekly‘s Writers to Watch\, and a most anticipated book of the year by The Millions and Ms. \nIn the wake of China’s invasion of Tibet throughout the 1950s\, Lhamo and her sister\, Tenkyi\, arrive at a refugee camp on the border of Nepal. As Lhamo tries to rebuild a life amid a shattered community\, hope arrives in the form of a young man named Samphel and his uncle. \nBreathtaking in scope and powerfully intimate\, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is a gorgeously written meditation on colonization\, displacement\, and the lengths we’ll go to remain connected to our families and ancestral lands. Told through the lives of four people over fifty years\, this beautifully lyrical debut novel provides a nuanced portrait of the world of Tibetan exiles. \nUncertain Kin by Janice Lynn Mather \nFrom Governor General’s Literary Award finalist Janice Lynn Mather comes a mesmerizing collection of linked stories that explores the beauty and brutality of being alive. \nSet against the vivid backdrop of The Bahamas\, eighteen luminous and haunting stories introduce women and girls searching for certainty and belonging as they navigate profound upheaval. The characters are bold and big-hearted\, complex and intimately familiar. They grapple with the bonds of kinship and the responsibilities of parenthood\, with grief\, longing\, betrayal\, coming of age and what it means to be a woman. \nTinged with folklore and the surreal\, Uncertain Kin is grounded by its emotional richness and breathtaking insight into our relationships with others—and ourselves. This extraordinary collection signals the debut of an important new voice in literature. \nIncite events are free and open to the public\, but an RSVP is required. We encourage you to pick up the book at your favourite independent bookseller. \nThis event can be attended in-person or online. At checkout\, we will ask you if you plan to join us online or in-person.  \nThe Vancouver Writers Fest encourages patrons to wear face masks at its events. While not currently mandated by the BC health authority\, face masks continue to offer assurance and safety for many of the communities the VWF serves. We thank you for your understanding and consideration.
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/incite-may-18
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event,Digital,Theatre
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220504T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220504T190000
DTSTAMP:20260409T052018
CREATED:20220419T230623Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220419T232035Z
UID:10000237-1651690800-1651690800@writersfest.bc.ca
SUMMARY:Incite: Kiss the Red Stairs with Marsha Lederman
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library and TELUS. \nIn a powerful and intimate Incite event\, long-time Festival friend\, moderator\, and award-winning journalist Marsha Lederman returns to our in-person stages for the launch of her stunning memoir on intergenerational trauma\, monumental change\, and survival. Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust\, Once Removed explores the impact of a generation’s anguish on her family\, beginning when Lederman was only five years old\, and asked her mother why she didn’t have any grandparents. \nIn conversation with Kathryn Gretsinger\, another beloved moderator of the Festival\, this heart-to-heart will explore the rippling effect of Lederman’s family history throughout her own life\, including being a mother to a young son\, experiencing a difficult divorce\, and an ever-present need to explore and understand the stories and experiences of those that have gone before. \nRSVP to join us for the first in-person Incite events in two years—a momentous occasion made even more special for the friends we’ll have together on stage. If you would prefer to join us online\, register to receive the livestream link! \nFrom the publisher \nFor readers of All Things Consoled by Elizabeth Hay and They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson\, Kiss the Red Stairs is a compelling memoir by award-winning journalist Marsha Lederman. Marsha was five when a simple question led to a horrifying answer. Sitting in her kitchen\, she asked her mother why she didn’t have any grandparents. Her mother told her the truth: the Holocaust. \nDecades later\, her parents dead and herself a mother to a young son\, Marsha begins to wonder how much history has shaped her own life. Reeling in the wake of a divorce\, she craves her parents’ help. But in their absence\, she is gripped by a need to understand the trauma they suffered\, and she begins her own journey into the past to tell her family’s stories of loss and resilience. Kiss the Red Stairs is a compelling memoir of Holocaust survival\, intergenerational trauma\, divorce\, and discovery that will guide readers through several lifetimes of monumental change. \nIncite events are free and open to the public\, but an RSVP is required. We encourage you to pick up the book at your favourite independent bookseller. \nThis event can be attended in-person or online. At checkout\, we will ask you if you plan to join us online or in-person.  \nThe Vancouver Writers Fest encourages patrons to wear face masks at its events. While not currently mandated by the BC health authority\, face masks continue to offer assurance and safety for many of the communities the VWF serves. We thank you for your understanding and consideration.
URL:https://writersfest.bc.ca/event/kiss-the-red-stairs
LOCATION:Vancouver Public Library – Central Library
CATEGORIES:Incite Event,Digital,Theatre
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