2023 Festival Line-up
Authors, Moderators, Writing Week Facilitator
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He is the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines.
His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His short story Government Slots was selected for the Best Canadian Stories 2020 anthology. His new novel, What Strange Paradise, was published in July 2022 from Knopf. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair—and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.
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
Seth Klein is the Team Lead for the Climate Emergency Unit (a project of the David Suzuki Institute). Previously, Seth served for 22 years as the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a public policy research institute committed to social, economic and environmental justice. He is a writer, speaker and policy consultant, and an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University’s Urban Studies program. He writes a bi-monthly column for Canada’s National Observer. Seth’s book – A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency – was published in September 2020. Seth is a founder and served for eight years as co-chair of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition, a co-founder of the Metro Vancouver Living Wage for Families campaign, and an advisory board member for the Columbia Institute’s Centre for Civic Governance. He also serves on the board of Dogwood. A social change activist for over 35 years, Seth lives in East Vancouver with his partner and two children. A Good War “is structured around lessons from the Second World War – the last time Canada faced an existential threat. Others have said we need a “wartime approach” to climate change, but this is the first book to delve into what that could actually look like. Canada’s wartime experience, Klein contends, provides an inspirational reminder that we have done this before. We have mobilized in common cause across class, race and gender, and entirely retooled our economy in the space of a few short years.”
Latest Book: A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate EmergencyPlease 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
Tsering Yangzom Lama’s debut novel, We Measure the Earth with our Bodies, is a New York Times Summer Reads Pick and a finalist for The Scotiabank Giller Prize, and longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and The Toronto Book Award. She holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and a BA in Creative Writing and International Relations from the University of British Columbia. She currently lives in Vancouver, Canada. “Breathtaking 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.”
Latest Book: We Measure the Earth with our BodiesPlease 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
Susan J. Lundy has written two books. Home on the Strange: Chronicles of Motherhood, Mayhem and Matters of the Heart, published by Heritage House, is a collection of humour stories pulled from years of column-writing for magazines and newspapers. Heritage Apples: A New Sensation, is a journey of heritage apple discovery, published in 2013. After spending 25 years as a journalist and newspaper editor, Susan is currently managing editor of the Boulevard Magazine Group. https://www.boulevardmagazines.com/ She also oversees a number of smaller regional magazines, including Oak Bay’s Tweed magazine and the Saanich Peninsula’s Pearl magazine. Susan has won more than two dozen feature writing awards from Canadian and regional newspaper associations, as well as the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors. She is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Jack Webster Award. In her travel and lifestyle articles, she has written about her experiences in places from Jamaica to New York City, and closer to home on Salt Spring island.
Home on the Strange: Chronicles of Motherhood, Mayhem, and Matters of the Heart is Susan’s second book. “Her passion for writing—mostly humour, travel and creative non-fiction these days—merges with her love of family in this collection of humourous and touching stories. Of Home on the Strange, Susan says: “My life is peppered with amusing experiences that beg to be put into stories. I’ve also experienced some trauma, including my daughter’s cycling accident and my husband’s heart attack. These are the types of slice-of-life situations—some poignant, most amusing—that are compiled in this book. It is a true labour of love.”
Latest Book: Home on the Strange: Chronicles of Motherhood, Mayhem and Matters of the Heart
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
Suzette Mayr won the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her latest novel, The Sleeping Car Porter, was published in the Fall 2022. “Mayr’s sixth novel tells the story of Baxter, a Black man in 1929 who works as a sleeping-car porter on a train that travels across the country. He smiles and tries to be invisible to the passengers, but what he really wants is to save up and go to dentistry school. On one particular trip out west, the train is stalled and Baxter finds a naughty postcard of two gay men. The postcard reawakens his memories and longings and puts his job in jeopardy.”
Mayr is the author of six novels including Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall. Her fourth novel Monoceros won the ReLit Award and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, was longlisted for the 2011 Giller Prize, and nominated for a Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction and the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. Monoceros was also included on The Globe and Mail’s 100 Best Books of 2011. Her novels have also been nominated for the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book. She has done inter-disciplinary work with Calgary theatre company Theatre Junction, visual artists Lisa Brawn and Geoff Hunter, and she was a writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary and at Widener University, Pennsylvania. She is a former President of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Calgary.
Latest Book: The Sleeping Car PorterPlease 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
Bruce McIvor, lawyer and historian, is a partner at First Peoples Law LLP, a law firm dedicated to defending and advancing Indigenous Peoples’ inherent and constitutionally protected title, rights and treaty rights. His work includes both litigation and negotiation on behalf of Indigenous Peoples. Bruce is recognized nationally and internationally as a leading practitioner of Aboriginal law in Canada. Bruce is dedicated to public education. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Allard School of Law where he teaches the constitutional law of Aboriginal and Treaty rights. Bruce holds a law degree, a Ph.D. in environmental history and is a Fulbright Scholar. His great-grandparents took Métis scrip at Red River in Manitoba. He is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and serves on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International Canada. Bruce’s latest book is Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix it. In this series of concise and thoughtful essays, lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor explains why reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is failing and what needs to be done to fix it.
Latest Book: Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix ItPlease 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
Tolu Oloruntoba lived in Nigeria and the United States before settling in the metro area of Coast Salish lands known as Vancouver with his family. He spent his early career as a primary care physician, and currently manages virtual health projects with organizations in British Columbia. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, while his debut chapbook, Manubrium, was a bpNichol Chapbook Award finalist. The Junta of Happenstance, his first full-length collection, was the winner of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for English Language Poetry and the Canadian winner of the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize. Tolu’s latest book, Each One a Furnace “explores (im)migration, diasporas, transience, and instability by following the behaviour, and abundant variety, of finches. The often-migratory birds in these poems typify the unrest, and inability to rest, that animate the lives of billions in the modern world. Out of the register of ornithology, themes of difficulty, adversity, and migrancy, urban ennui, and the psychic struggles of diasporic peoples take shape as those unable to be at rest in the world take to improbable flight. Trailing the global mobility of birds, in urban and non-urban settings, in historical and contemporary contexts, and through the metaphysical and concrete, Each One a Furnace is a chronicle of struggle within, and between, cultures.”
Latest Book: Each One a FurnacePlease 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
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest, whose books have garnered international acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, religion, environmental politics, and global pop culture into unique, hybrid, narrative forms. Her new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, published by Viking in September 2021, tells the story of a young boy who, after the death of his father, starts to hear voices and finds solace in the companionship of his very own book. Her novels, My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), A Tale for the Time Being (2013) and The Book of Form and Emptiness (2022) have been translated and published in over thirty countries. Her third novel, A Tale for the Time Being, won the LA Times Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Book of Form and Emptiness is the winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction as well as the 22nd Annual Massachusetts Book Award, the BC Yukon Book Prize, and the Julia Ward Howe Prize for Fiction.
Her work of personal non-fiction, The Face: A Time Code (2016), was published by Restless Books as part of their groundbreaking series called The Face. Ruth’s documentary and dramatic independent films, including Halving the Bones, have been shown on PBS, at the Sundance Film Festival, and at colleges and universities across the country. A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Ruth was ordained in 2010 and is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation. She splits her time between Western Massachusetts, New York City, and Cortes Island, Canada. She currently teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities in the Department of English Language and Literature. Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Winner of the BC and Yukon Book Prize, Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, Winner of the Julia Ward Howe Prize for Fiction (Boston Author’s Club), Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Latest Book: The Book of Form and EmptinessPlease 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
Britt Wray is a leading researcher at the forefront of climate change and mental health, as well as an author and broadcaster. Her latest book Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis, is an impassioned generational perspective on how to stay sane amid climate disruption and was named a finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Award. Climate and environment-related fears and anxieties are on the rise everywhere. As with any type of stress, eco-anxiety can lead to lead to burnout, avoidance, or a disturbance of daily functioning. In Generation Dread, Britt Wray seamlessly merges scientific knowledge with emotional insight to show how these intense feelings are a healthy response to the troubled state of the world. The first crucial step toward becoming an engaged steward of the planet is connecting with our climate emotions, seeing them as a sign of humanity, and learning how to live with them.
Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Britt leads a Chair’s Special Initiative on Climate and Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of Stanford University School of Medicine. She holds a PhD in science communication from the University of Copenhagen. On topics of climate and mental health, Britt has advised the Canadian Federal Ministers, the US State Department, and multiple Fortune 500 companies. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, Guardian and Globe and Mail, among other publications. She has hosted several podcasts, radio and TV programs with the BBC and CBC, is a TED speaker, and writes Gen Dread, a newsletter about staying sane in the climate crisis: https://gendread.substack.com/.
Latest Book: Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate CrisisPlease 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
JP (Jo-Anne) McLean is an award-winning and bestselling indie author of urban fantasy and supernatural thrillers. She’s written ten books in two series, one novella, and several short stories. JP is a member of the Federation of BC Writers and the Alliance of Independent Authors. She lives on Canada’s West Coast
Latest Book: The Gift LegacyPlease 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
Canada Reads finalist Angie Abdou has published seven books and co-edited Writing the Body in Motion and Not Hockey, two collections 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.” Elle Magazine calls her second book of creative nonfiction, This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Memoir, a “sweet tale about a growing and changing parent-child relationship.” Angie Abdou is a Professor of Creative Writing at Athabasca University.
Latest Book: This One Wild LifePlease 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
May 2023 Festival Special Event
One Night Only
Join Us For A
Special One-Evening Event with Edward Slingerland – May 20, 2023
The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival invites you to a special guest one evening event with Edward Slingerland, in the lead-up to the main Festival. Edward latest book is entitled, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization.
An “entertaining and enlightening” deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization—and the evolutionary roots of humanity’s appetite for intoxication (Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercised).
Slingerland takes up the cause with all the chivalry of a knight-errant, and his infectious passion makes this book a romp as well as a refreshingly erudite rejoinder to the prevailing wisdom. (Zoë Lescaze, The New York Times)
Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. (Goodreads)
Edward (edwardslingerland.com) is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where he also holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Asian Studies. He is also Director of the Database of Religious History (religiondatabase.org). Dr. Slingerland is the author of several academic monographs and edited volumes, a major translation of the Analects of Confucius, and approximately fifty book chapters, reviews, and articles in top academic journals in a wide range of fields. His first trade book, Trying Not to Try (Crown 2014), ties together insights from early Chinese thought and modern psychological research. His second, Drunk (Little, Brown Spark June 2021), targets the standard scientific view of our taste for intoxicants as an evolutionary accident, arguing instead that alcohol and other drugs have played a crucial role in helping humans to be more creative, trusting and cooperative.
Latest Book: Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization
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