2022 Festival Line-up
Authors, Moderators, Writing Week Facilitator
Canada Reads finalist Angie Abdou has published seven books and co-edited Writing the Body in Motion, a collection of essays on Canadian Sport Literature. A starred-review in New York’s Booklist declared her best-selling memoir, Home Ice: Reflections of a Reluctant Hockey Mom, “a first rate memoir and a fine example of narrative nonfiction.” This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Memoir launched this April 2021. A review in Elle Magazine says “Anyone who has ever been pushed to do something outdoorsy because it was good for them – or who has been the parent doing the pushing – will find this sweet tale about a growing and changing parent-child relationship all too familiar.”
Angie Abdou is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Athabasca University.
Preview video: youtube.com/watch
Latest Book: This One Wild Life
Please consider purchasing this book through Abraxas, our local independent bookstore and an important partner in the Festival. Send an email to: Abraxas
Website: Open Link
Anosh Irani’s novel, The Parcel, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by the Globe and Mail, the Quill and Quire, the National Post, The Walrus, and CBC Books. His play, Bombay Black, won five Dora Mavor Moore Awards, including for Outstanding New Play. His anthology, The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama as was his most recent play, The Men in White. His latest book, Translated from the Gibberish, has been released by Knopf in 2019. He lives in Vancouver.
Preview video: vimeo.com/431639799
Latest Book: Translations from the GibberishPlease consider purchasing this book through Abraxas, our local independent bookstore and an important partner in the Festival. Send an email to: Abraxas
Website: Open Link
Cedar Bowers‘s short fiction has been published in Joyland, Taddle Creek, and The Malahat Review. Astra, her debut novel, was nominated for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. With her husband, novelist Michael Christie, and their two children, she divides her time between Galiano Island and Victoria, Coast Salish Territory of the Lkwungen speaking people, the unceded territory of WSANEC, Penelakut, Hwlitsum Nations, and the ceded territory of the Tsawwassen First Nation.
Latest Book: AstraPlease consider purchasing this book through Abraxas, our local independent bookstore and an important partner in the Festival. Send an email to: Abraxas
Website: Open Link
Dr. Brian Goldman is a physician who thinks like a patient. He is an ER doctor at the Schwartz Reisman Emergency Centre at Sinai Health System in Toronto. Since 2007 he has hosted White Coat, Black Art, an award-winning show on CBC Radio One about the patient experience in the culture of modern medicine. His TED talk – Doctors Make Mistakes. Can We Talk About That? – has been viewed by more than 1.5 million people. His bestselling book, The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy is Essential in Everyday Life, was published in 2018. His newest book is The Power of Teamwork: How We Can All Work Better Together.
Preview video: youtube.com/watch
Latest Book: The Power of KindnessPlease consider purchasing this book through Abraxas, our local independent bookstore and an important partner in the Festival. Send an email to: Abraxas
Website: Open Link
Jónína Kirton is a Red River Métis/Icelandic poet. She graduated from the Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio in 2007, where she is now an instructor. Although she acknowledges and is thankful for the teachings offered through academic institutions, she leans heavily into what some term ‘other ways of knowing’. Her writing is often a weaving of body and land as she firmly believes until we care for women’s bodies we will not care for the earth.
A late blooming poet, she was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book, Standing in a River of Time, merges poetry and lyrical memoir on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on a Metis family.
A landless Metis citizen, she currently lives in New Westminster, British Columbia, the unceded territory of many Coast Salish nations, including the Qayqayt, Sto:lo, Tsawwassen, Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, Tsleil-Waututh, Katzie and Kwantlen.
Preview video: vimeo.com/431650800
Website: Open Link
Kate Harris is a writer and adventurer with a knack for getting lost. Her debut memoir, Lands of Lost Borders, about cycling the Silk Road, was a number one national bestseller in Canada and the winner of the RBC Taylor Prize, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, among others. The book has been translated into several languages. Harris has degrees in science from MIT and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and in the history of science from Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She lives off-grid in a log cabin in northernmost British Columbia.
Preview video: vimeo.com/22191493
Please consider purchasing this book through Abraxas, our local independent bookstore and an important partner in the Festival. Send an email to: AbraxasWebsite: Open Link
Libby Davies has been a social activist for 45 plus years. She began as a community organizer in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 1972. She was elected to Vancouver City Council for 5 consecutive terms, 1982-1993. As the Member of Parliament for Vancouver East for 6 consecutive terms, 1997-2015, she became NDP House Leader (2003-2011), and Deputy Leader (2007-2015). Libby continues to be an outspoken advocate for human rights, housing, peace, and social justice. She was awarded the Order of Canada in 2016.
Libby was appointed to the board of governors of Vancouver Community College in 2018, and serves as Vice Chair. She is also a board member and Vice Chair of the Portland Hotel Community Services Society. She is author of Outside In: A Political Memoir (May 2015, published by Between the Lines, Toronto), and is a frequent public speaker on progressive transformative change and its relationship to politics. Libby is currently writing a new book.
Preview video: vimeo.com/431696740
Latest Book: Outside In: A Political MemoirWebsite: Open Link
Since 1986 Mark Jaccard has been a professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, interrupted in 1992-97 when he served as Chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission. His PhD is in energy economics from the University of Grenoble, and his research focus is the design and application of energy-economy models for assessing climate policies. Internationally, Mark has served on the IPCC, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, and the Global Energy Assessment, and domestically on the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, and the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the CD Howe Institute, and in 2009 was named British Columbia Academic of the Year. He is one of eight professors at Simon Fraser University awarded the title, Distinguished Professor. He has published over 100 academic papers. In 2006, his Sustainable Fossil Fuels won the Donner Prize for top policy book in Canada. His latest book, released in February 2020, is The Citizen’s Guide for Climate Success.
Preview video: youtube.com/watch
Latest Book: The citizen's guide to climate successWebsite: Open Link
Michael Christie is the author of the novel If I Fall, If I Die, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Kirkus Prize, was selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick, as well as being on numerous best-of 2015 lists. His linked collection of stories, The Beggar’s Garden, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Prize for Fiction, and won the Vancouver Book Award. His essays and books reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Globe and Mail. Greenwood, his most recent novel, is an international bestseller, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Arthur Ellis Award for best novel.
A former carpenter and homeless shelter worker, he divides his time between Victoria and Galiano Island, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Cedar Bowers, and two sons in a timber frame house that he built himself.
Preview video: youtube.com/watch
Latest Book: GreenwoodWebsite: Open Link
Peggy Herring is the author of two novels: Anna, Like Thunder and This Innocent Corner. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary journals such as Grain, The Antigonish Review, Prism International and others. Prior to turning to fiction, she worked in international development in Bangladesh and Nepal, and spent another six years living in India. Prior to that, she was a journalist with CBC Radio in British Columbia and Newfoundland.
She has recently been writer-in-residence at Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Shelton, Washington. She is also a professional editor working mostly in the social sciences.
She lives in Victoria, BC, where she likes to get dirty in her much-too-big garden and on west coast hiking trails.
Preview video: vimeo.com/435136693
Please consider purchasing this book through Abraxas, our local independent bookstore and an important partner in the Festival. Send an email to: AbraxasWebsite: Open Link
