Vancouver Writers Fest

Jennifer Egan

Arielle — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 21:38:58 +0000

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In Conversation with Jennifer Egan

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Fall Special Events

Arielle — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 16:32:06 +0000

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Special Events

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2017 Dates

Arielle — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 19:38:41 +0000

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Reimagine Your World at Vancouver Writers Fest 2017

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A Spark Burns Brightly

Arielle — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 00:47:16 +0000

This blog post comes to you from Yvonne Zacharias, a VWF Volunteer who wanted to share this amazing Festival experience

Having been a journalist for many years, a former Quebecer and mother of three, one evening of volunteering at the 2015 Vancouver Writers Festival on Granville Island created an unforgettable experience.

I acompanied Ensaf Haidar, the wife of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, and their three children, Najwa, 12, Tirad, 11 and Miriam, 8, to the event where Ensaf was to speak. Because the family speaks no English and is fluent in French and Arabic, I was asked to help as I speak French. From the minute I met her at the Granville Hotel where the family was staying, I could see that inside this determined and remarkably calm mother, a spark burns brightly.

As we walked to the event, it wasn't all seriousness. We shared little tips about living in Quebec. We talked about the cold winters, about skating, about hockey, about school, about the mundanities of life, as though they could mask the perilous state of their one family member who could not be with us. I felt that a little of Quebec, which I miss at times, had come to visit in the unlikely form of a Saudi Arabian family. The kids and I even joked about getting Ensaf on skates one day!

When we arrived at the theatre, journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who was jailed by Egyptian authorities for over a year, and his wife, Marwa Omara, joined us backstage before the event. The scene in the room was like one in an airport where long lost strangers meet. Marwa held Miriam on her knee as they all talked in Arabic. I have no idea what they were saying. I didn't need to. It was magic. Then it was Ensaf's time to take the stage. As she spoke, Mohamed, Marwa and I sat with the three children who, obviously exhausted, nodded off in their seats.

After we all walked back to the Granville Hotel, Mohamed holding Tirad's hand, Ensaf and Najwa both gave me a big hug. Goodbye, goodbye. I turned back for one last look in Ensaf's eyes. And there it was, caught in the faint light of a dark, misty evening. That spark.

To learn more about Raif Badawi and Ensaf's campaign to free him and other imprisoned journalists and activists, please visit raifbadawi.org

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2015 Festival

Prodigy E-Bikes

Arielle — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 19:40:39 +0000

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Central Mountain Air

Arielle — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 19:16:32 +0000

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SFU 50th

Arielle — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 19:06:12 +0000

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Festival Sponsors -- Limited Edition

Governor General's Book Awards

Arielle — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 00:35:02 +0000

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Introducing: Jordan Abel

Arielle — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 22:17:55 +0000

Say hello to the authors of the 2015 Vancouver Writers Fest! Each week in August - October, we'll be introducing you to three of our Festival authors with a blog post filled with interesting facts about the author and their upcoming book. Read all about them, buy their book and then come see them at the Festival in the fall. Enjoy!

Jordan Abel
British Columbia, Event 53 "Pure Poetry"

Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a writer who lives in Vancouver. He holds a BA from the University of Alberta and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. His debut poetry collection, The Place of Scraps, was awarded the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Abel is an editor for Poetry Is Dead magazine and the former poetry editor for PRISM international. His new poetry collection is Un/inhabited. His website is www.jordanabel.ca and you can find him on Twitter as @Jordoisdead

His advice for poets: “The best advice I could give any poet is that almost everything is (or can be) poetry. The field is wide open. Poetry can be whatever you want it to be. The possibilities are endless. In other words, don’t get caught up trying to stay within the boundaries, because there are no boundaries. Try things out. Get outside your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Subvert expectations. Have fun. As Kenneth Goldsmith once said, 'Take as many risks as you can because poets have nothing to gain by playing it safe and we have nothing to lose by taking risks.'” Source

On creating Un/inhabited: To write the poems in his second collection, Abel drew from 91 western novels (totaling more than 10,000 pages of source text). By searching for specific words or phrases pertaining to land use, ownership and property with these novels, Abel would then extract sentences where these words were used and compile them together in what later became his individual poems. “The result of this kind of curation,” he says, “is that the context surrounding the word is suddenly visible. How is this word deployed? What surrounds it? What is left over once that word is removed?” Read on.

Unsettling the poetic form: In an episode of the podcast Can’t Lit, Abel talks about the obvious difficulties and rewards of reading the poems in Un/inhabited. Because the poems are visual and non-linear, Abel admits they can be more than a bit daunting for readers who are used to more ‘traditional’ forms of poetry, with few readers being able to sit down and read the book cover to cover without purposely skim reading parts. However, there’s much to be gained from Abel’s poems, as hosts Dina and Daniel discover. Listen here.

Learning from Vancouver’s best: Abel thinks that his work would “not be the same,” were he to live in another city. He credits writers like Daniel Zomparelli, Ray Hsu, Bert Almon and Melissa Jacques for making his poetry what it is today by offering essential feedback and recommending inspiring books. Now, he helps to foster the Vancouver writing community as an instructor at several creative writing programs in the city. Read on.

Place of Scraps: Abel’s first collection of poetry, Place of Scraps, used a similar technique as Un/inhabited, drawing sentences from Marius C. Barbeau’s book Totem Poles and was called, “a surprising and necessary book of poetry” and “humbly unstoppable” by poet Rita Wong. Listen and watch Abel perform poetry from Place of Scraps here.

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Introducing our Festival Authors

Introducing: Irina Kovalyova

Arielle — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 22:10:50 +0000

Irina Kovalyova
British Columbia, Events 52 "True to Form" and 87 "The Interviews"

Irina Kovalyova has a master’s degree in chemistry from Brown University, a doctoral degree in microbiology from Queen’s University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University. Kovalyova interned for NASA and worked for two years as a forensic analyst in New York City. Specimen is her first collection of stories.

Nature vs. Nurture: Although perhaps an unusual combination, Kovalyova’s extensive background in the sciences lends itself well to writing short fiction. In Specimen, her characters work as botanists in North Korea and archivists in physics institutions; meanwhile, the collection is united by the theme of the search for knowledge and how study and data analysis have the potential to lead us to discovery. However, as this review from Quill & Quire says, “no school could instill in someone the innate gifts Kovalyova possesses.” Read on.

The Function of Humour: While many of the stories in Specimen deal with dark and uncomfortable topics, there is a touch of irony that keeps things from getting too depressing. As one reviewer explains, this irony is “often derived from the contrast between the attempts of science to explain everything and the mystery these attempts only serve to deepen.” Read on.

A Neural Network of Inspiration: When asked about where the inspiration for the stories in Specimen came from, Kovalyova said, “I am inspired by all sorts of events in the course of a single day—experiments in the lab with my students, conversations with friends, philosophical questions my six-year-old daughter asks—it’s hard to keep track of different influences that surface in my writing.” She also said that she imagines inspiration as “a little bit like a vast neural network, with all linkages interconnected, even though individual neurons might be firing at different times.” Read on.

Early Riser: On writing days, Kovalyova wakes up at 4am and—once she’s made some coffee—sits down to write. “Early mornings are the best time for writing for me, when my family is asleep and the world is waking up and I can sense all sorts of interesting possibilities in it. When I write in the early morning I feel like I’m helping to unfold one of those possibilities.” Read on.

Sharing Her Knowledge: In the fall, Kovalyova will be teaching a course at Simon Fraser University called “Monsters and Mutants,” about the science behind science fiction. “We will be looking at stem-cell technologies, DNA cloning, the nature of inheritance, the nature of mutations—all of which I think are good for any educated person to know.” The reading list for the course includes The Island of Dr. Moreau by HG Wells, The Adromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood as well as an actual textbook on cell biology. Read on.

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Introducing our Festival Authors