This year’s Vancouver Writers Fest will run from October 20 to 26 and will feature 130 Canadian and international authors at more than 85 in-person events. Most of the action will take place at Granville Island venues, but authors will also be visiting Lower Mainland schools.
Here are three events that might interest those keen to learn about diverse cultures.
Blood in the Pen: Stories, Crises, Repair, and the Writer
Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnston Street) at 8:30 p.m. on October 21
Guest curator Canisia Lubrin will join three admired writers for a conversation about storytelling in connection with crises in the world.
Former long-time Vancouver resident Otoniya J. Okot Bitek is author of We, the Kindling, which begins with three women in their late 20s who survived being held by the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda. The Uganda-raised Otok Bitek earned a master’s and doctorate from UBC before becoming an assistant professor of English literature and creative writing at Queen’s University.
Saeed Teebi is a Toronto-based Palestinian Canadian and the author of You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestinian Writing in Dark Times. According to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, his book addresses his family’s displacement, as well as the effects of genocide on the bodies, minds, and imaginations of Palestinians specifically as well as humanity in general.
The third writer on the panel is Vancouver-born and Booker Prize–shortlisted author Madeliene Thien. Her newest novel, The Book of Records, is about people from different centuries who take refuge at a staging post between migrations.
Here’s a fun fact about Thien: many years ago, she edited Rice Paper, which is published by the non-profit, Vancouver-based Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop.
Visions of Chinatown
Waterfront Theatre (1412 Cartwright Street) at 10 a.m. on October 24
Writer and editor Anna Ling Kaye will moderate a discussion with author and artist Donna Seto and Vancouver Chinatown Foundation chair and co-founder Carol Lee.
Seto is author of the illustrated book Chinatown Vancouver, which tells the history of different buildings in the historic neighbourhood. Lee is co-author of Vitality, a companion publication to the Vitality exhibition at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre.
Veteran journalists Susanna Ng and Ramona Mar co-authored Vitality, which includes forewords by noted Canadian authors Douglas Coupland and Paul Yee. Vitality is full of stories alongside photographer Fred Herzog’s images of Chinatown and surrounding neighbourhoods from the 1950s to 1970s.
Here’s a fun fact about Seto: she has a PhD in politics and international relations from the Australian National University.
Kiran Desai in Conversation
Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnston Street) at 2 p.m. on October 26
Fans of the great author interviewer Eleanor Wachtel are in for a treat when she speaks to Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai at the Vancouver Writers Fest. Desai won the Booker in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss. Now, she’s on the shortlist for her new novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. If Desai receives her second Booker in November, she will become only the fifth author to accomplish this feat, joining Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, J.M. Coetzee, and Hilary mantel in this distinguished group.
Wachtel was the longtime host of Writers & Company on CBC Radio One. Desai, daughter of author Anita Desai, was born in New Delhi and spent her early years in Mumbai. Since her teenage years, Desai has spent much of her life in the United States and her sprawling new novel is about two Indian immigrants to the United States who meet on a train in India.
Here’s a fun fact about Desai: she attended the same elite school in Mumbai, albeit at a later time, as author Salman Rushdie and CNN host Fareed Zakaria. In 2024, Desai spoke on behalf of Rushdie at the 2024 National Book Awards finalists’ reading.
To learn more about the Vancouver Writers Fest, visit the website. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia and Bluesky @pancouver.bsky.social. The publication is also on Instagram @PancouverMedia.
