Books & Ideas Audio — Vancouver Writers Fest

For years, #1 New York Times bestselling author Carley Fortune was told that international readers weren’t interested in books with rural, authentic Canadian settings. And ever since she published her first novel in 2022, her meteoric success has told a different story. The Ontarian author joined the Vancouver Writers Fest with her latest book, Our Perfect Storm (set in Tofino!), in conversation with her best friend, Meredith Marino.

Stephanie Sinclair, co-editor of A Steady Brightness of Being and publisher of McClelland & Stewart, hosts a panel conversation with award-winning contributors to the book from across Turtle Island: David A. Robertson, Kyle Edwards and Niigaan Sinclair. This first-of-its-kind anthology is a groundbreaking collection of letters from Indigenous writers, activists, and thinkers—to their ancestors, to future generations, and to themselves. Recorded at the Vancouver Writers Fest on October 24, 2025, and presented in partnership with Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week, Talking Stick Festival, and Full Circle: First Nations Performance.

Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, and one of Time’s one hundred most influential people in the world, George Saunders writes books that are both irreverent and momentous—and utterly unique. He joined us to discuss his latest bestselling novel, Vigil, with acclaimed author Alix Ohlin. Both authors are also revered writing instructors—Saunders at Syracuse University, and Ohlin at the University of British Columbia—and this conversation is filled with essential insights for writers and readers.

Arundhati Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize and made her an international household name. She has gone on to publish multiple acclaimed books—including The Ministry of Utmost Happiness—and to challenge injustices around the world as a prominent political and environmental activist. She joined us with her debut memoir, in conversation with award-winning author Naomi Klein. One of the best reviewed books of the year, Mother Mary Comes to Me is a soaring account of how Roy became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother.

Dionne Brand’s first major book of nonfiction in more than 20 years—Salvage: Readings from the Wreck—offers a bracing look at the intersections of reading and life, and of what remains in the wreck of empire. In conversation with Kimberly Bain, she shares how she learned to read the literature of two empires, British and American, in an anti-colonial light—in order to survive and in order to live. This conversation was recorded on October 23, 2024, and presented in partnership with Hogan's Alley Society.

Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point, changed the way we think and talk about the dissemination of ideas. Twenty-five years after its publication—and many New York Times-bestselling books later—Gladwell reframes the lessons of his groundbreaking debut for our confounding new era, in Revenge of the Tipping Point. He speaks with CBC’s The National host Ian Hanomansing in this conversation filled with laughs and jaw-dropping stories.

At the heart of Robert Macfarlane's Is a River Alive? is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings, who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Around the world, rivers are dying from pollution, drought and damming. But a powerful “rights of nature” movement is underway to re-animate our relationships with these vast, mysterious presences whose landscapes we share. 

Macfarlane joined us and local environmental non-profit Pacific Salmon Foundation to discuss a radical re-imagination of not only rivers but life itself, in conversation with award-winning journalist Laura Lynch.

We all owe a great deal of gratitude—not just admiration—to award-winning, Anishinaabe author and journalist Tanya Talaga, whose work (such as Seven Fallen Feathers and All Our Relations) has transformed Canadians’ understanding of the systemic injustices faced by Indigenous peoples across the country, and offered deeply important, actionable recommendations for how to meet and overcome such wrongs. The Knowing is another essential read: the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have read before. It is the history of the country through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great-grandmother Annie Carpenter and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned disenfranchisement and genocide. She speaks to this deeply personal, seminal work with Candis Callison, in this conversation recorded at the 2024 Vancouver Writers Fest, and presented in partnership with HarperCollins Canada Ltd. 

Acclaimed authors Christina Wong and Daniel Innes, Henry Tsang, and Fae Myenne Ng joined us at the 2023 Vancouver Writers Fest for a discussion with Kevin Chong all about Chinatown—both what it means as a concept, and its various physical neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Toronto, and around the world. This event was presented on October 21, 2023 in partnership with the Chinatown Storytelling Centre.

Telling what’s real from what’s fake should be easy. In today’s world, that’s far from the case. Bestselling author and Canada Research Chair Timothy Caulfield joined the Vancouver Writers Fest to speak with Marsha Lederman about his new book, The Certainty Illusion—along with misinformation, fake news, and the noble pursuit of truth in science, academia, politics, and life.