To honour the life and work of Murray Sinclair—trail-blazing Anishinaabe lawyer and senator, the first Indigenous judge appointed in Manitoba, and Chief Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—hear a conversation between Shelagh Rogers and Tanya Talaga at the 2024 Vancouver Writers Fest, celebrating and discussing his powerful memoir, Who We Are: Four Questions For A Life And A Nation.This event was recorded on October 24—shortly before Murray Sinclair passed away on November 4, 2024.

Ali Velshi—Chief Correspondent for MSNBC, a weekly economics contributor to NPR, and host of his own news show, “Velshi”—joins us to discuss his new book Small Acts of Courage, a captivating family history that illustrates how small actions can have an outsized political impact. He speaks with Ian Hanomansing, host of CBC’s The National from Vancouver on Fridays and Sundays, about his family, the upcoming US election, and the risks of being a journalist today.

The Vancouver Writers Fest and Upstart & Crow Literary Arts Studio welcomed Ukraine’s most celebrated writer, Andrey Kurkov, to discuss his work with international correspondent for The Globe and Mail, Nathan VanderKlippe. Kurkov will be back at the Vancouver Writers Fest with his International Booker Prize-longlisted novel, The Silver Bone. Diary of an Invasion is a searing dispatch from the heart of Kyiv during the first year of the Russian assault. Kurkov’s award-winning novel, Grey Bees, is a dark foreshadowing of the devastation in the eastern part of Ukraine in which only two villagers remain in a village bombed to smithereens.

Travel into the heart of humanity with one of the foremost thinkers of our time. Wade Davis’s awe-inspiring career includes being the renowned author of 24 books, Professor of Anthropology, Member of the Order of Canada, and former Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. He joins the Vancouver Writers Fest with Beneath the Surface of Things, a new collection that dives into a timely and eclectic array of topics from across the planet. He speaks with award-winning journalist Laura Lynch, host of CBC’s What On Earth.

Michelle Good has moved and inspired millions of people with Five Little Indians, the Canada Reads-winning novel that tells the story of a group of residential school survivors coming to terms with their past and finding a way forward. She joined us at the Vancouver Writers Fest on October 21st, 2023, in partnership with Talking Stick Festival, HarperCollins Canada Ltd, and the Peter A. Allard Law School at UBC, in conversation with author Carleigh Baker. Her latest work of non-fiction, Truth Telling, is a collection of essays about the contemporary Indigenous experience in Canada—from resistance and reconciliation to the resurgence and reclamation of Indigenous power.

Where does one start when listing the accolades and praise for Celeste Ng’s deeply felt, intelligent body of work? Little Fires Everywhere sold millions of copies worldwide and was adapted to a highly acclaimed series on Hulu. Of her latest, Our Missing Hearts, Stephen King shared that “it’s impossible not to be moved,” while TIME, NPR, People, The Globe and Mail, and more, listed it as a book of the year. Celeste Ng joined us at the Festival for a conversation with Jael Richardson.

Our annual Poetry Bash is a gateway to discovering exceptional poets from across the globe. In this release from our 2023 flagship Festival, hear readings from Victoria Adukwei Bulley (Quiet), Lorna Crozier (After That), Patrick Friesen (Reckoning), Susan Musgrave (Exculpatory Lilies) Michael V. Smith (Queers Like Me), and Matthew James Weigel (Whitemud Walking).

Acclaimed Canadian writer Sheila Heti speaks with Molly Cross-Blanchard in this conversation from our 2024 Incite series, presented in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library. Her latest book, Alphabetical Diaries, collects lines from a decade's worth of her journals—rearranged in alphabetical order to create something entirely fresh and sublime. Heti is the author of ten previous books, including experimental and philosophical works such as Motherhood, Pure Colour, and How Should a Person Be?

Widely recognized as one of the finest and most influential authors writing in English today, Zadie Smith speaks about her acclaimed latest novel, The Fraud, with her internationally-renowned Canadian contemporary, Madeleine Thien. This event was presented in 2023 in partnership with UBC School of Creative Writing and the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, and with the support of Penguin Random House Canada.

Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, delves into what she calls the Mirror World—our destabilized present rife with doubles and confusion, where far-right movements playact solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, and so many of us project our own carefully curated digital doubles into the social media sphere. Klein delivers a revelatory treatment of the way many of us now think and feel, in this conversation with Jarrett Martineau from our 2023 Festival.