2020 Festival Reading List - Vancouver Writers Festival
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2020 Festival Reading List
Independent Bookselling Partners Support local and get a 15% discount on your next read! The Vancouver Writers Fest is delighted to partner with our city’s vibrant community of independent booksellers. This year, each are offering a 15% discount on all Festival titles in this Reading List. Books can be special ordered and/or purchased by visiting or calling the store and using the discount code provided below. Code: VWF READING LIST Official Festival Bookseller Kidsbooks kidsbooks.ca 604.738.5335 Bookseller Partners Book Warehouse bookwarehouse.ca 604.879.7737 Iron Dog Books irondogbooks.com 604.215.8807 Massy Books massybooks.com 604.721.4405 Paper Hound paperhound.ca 604.428.1344 Pulp Fiction* pulpfictionbooksvancouver.com 604.876.4311 *Please inquire at store to determine discount rate. 2
Welcome to our 2020 Festival Reading List!
The first part of this year brought about significant changes to the way that
people interact with each other, their communities and the arts. As people
retreated inside, and away from traditional forms of entertainment, learning
and communing, many of us at the Vancouver Writers Fest wondered what
the effect on reading and books might be. One thing became clear: books, ideas
and intelligent dialogue have a stronger place than ever in the soothing of the
collective conscience and the making of an empathetic and just society.
This fall, the VWF reimagines our programming as we shift to virtual and
podcasted events for our audiences. Our flagship Festival will run from October
19-25, featuring our Guest Curator, one of North America’s preeminent
storytellers and performers Ivan Coyote, and an exceptional lineup of
international and Canadian authors. Additionally, we will present weekly events
that will be streamed from September to December. We hope the collection of
authors and books offered here will inspire you to learn more about these writers
and their work, and to join us for these exciting events.
We are happy to partner with a superb selection of local, independent booksellers
who are able to offer a 15% discount on Vancouver Writers Fest books listed in
this catalogue. Help us support authors, publishers and bookstores by purchasing
or pre-ordering these titles today.
See you in the fall for our 33rd annual Festival! Our program guide will be
available in early September; stay tuned.
Wishing you a tranquil summer and happy reading,
Leslie Hurtig, Artistic Director
This Reading List represents all confirmed
VWF authors as of press time. For additions
please check our website regularly.
writersfest.bc.ca
3 3
Books for Adults
Discover the work of writers including:
Caroline Adderson Amanda Leduc
Ayad Akhtar Nancy Lee
Billy-Ray Belcourt Annabel Lyon
Cicely Belle Blain Margaret MacMillan
Jillian Christmas Megha Majumdar
Ivan Coyote Eternity Martis
Lorna Crozier David Mitchell
Wade Davis Noor Naga
Emma Donoghue Jenny Offill
Roddy Doyle Tegan Quin
Francesca Ekwuyasi Sara Quin
Katherine Fawcett Ian Rankin
Will Ferguson David A. Robertson
Patrick Friesen Marilynne Robinson
Michelle Good Leanne Betasamosake
Steven Heighton Simpson
Catherine Hernandez Kevin Spenst
Thomas Homer-Dixon Emily St. John Mandel
Helen Humphreys John Elizabeth Stintzi
Aislinn Hunter Jack Wang
Sheena Kamal Kawai Strong Washburn
Elin Kelsey Bryan Washington
Thomas King Ian Williams
Seth Klein Charles Yu
Shaena Lambert
For an up-to-date line-up, visit our website at writersfest.bc.ca.
4
A Russian Sister
Caroline Adderson
In this witty and colourful novel, Governor General award-
winning author Caroline Adderson effortlessly plunges the
reader into a nineteenth-century Russian tragicomedy. Aspiring
painter Masha C. is blindly devoted to Antosha, her famous
writer-brother. Their relationship begins to fracture one winter
when he falls into a depression and she desperately tries to help
him. Offering a clever commentary on the role of women as
prey for male needs and inspiration, A Russian Sister is also a
August 2020 plea for sisterhood familial and friendly.
HarperCollins Canada
$24.99
Fiction
Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar
From Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author
of Disgraced and American Dervish, comes the story of an
immigrant father and his son as they search for belonging in
post-Trump America, and with each other. A deeply personal
work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart
at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell
an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world made
by 9/11. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque
September 2020 novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the
Hachette Book Group CA country they both call home.
$35.00
Fiction
A History of My Brief Body
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Griffin Poetry Prize winner Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut
memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories
of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the
Driftpile First Nation. From there, it expands to encompass
the big and broken world around him, in all its complexity and
contradictions: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that
flourishes in spite of it, first loves and first loves lost, sexual
exploration and intimacy, and the act of writing as a survival
August 2020 instinct and a way to grieve.
Hamish Hamilton
$25.00
Memoir
5
Burning Sugar
Cicely Belle Blain
In this incendiary debut collection, activist, poet and
entrepreneur Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar
spaces in geography, the arts, and their personal history to
expose the legacy of colonization and its impact on Black
bodies. They use poetry to illuminate their activist work,
expose racism—especially anti-Blackness—and, in doing
so, help readers to see the connections between history and
September 2020 systemic oppression that show up in every human interaction,
Arsenal Pulp Press space, and community.
$18.95
Poetry
The Gospel of Breaking
Jillian Christmas
In The Gospel of Breaking, Jillian Christmas confirms what
followers of her performance and artistic curation have
long known: there is magic in her words. Befitting someone
who “speaks things into being,” Christmas extracts from
family history, queer lineage, and the political landscape of a
racialized life to create a rich, softly defiant collection of poems.
Expansive and beautiful, these poems allow readers to swim in
Available Christmas’s mother-tongue and to dream at her shores.
Arsenal Pulp Press
$14.95
Poetry
Rebent Sinner
Ivan Coyote, Guest Curator
From our Guest Curator comes an examination of what it
means to be trans and non-binary today from one of North
America’s most lauded storytellers, Rebent Sinner is both deeply
personal and powerfully political. Ivan Coyote―the winner
of the 2020 Freedom to Read Award―speaks candidly,
attentive not only to the struggles of encountering TERFs,
misgendering and prejudice, but also to the many joys and
Available occasions for hope. Rebent Sinner is a testament to resiliency and
Arsenal Pulp Press the diversity of humanity.
$19.95
Nonfiction
6
Through the Garden
Lorna Crozier
When Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane met in 1976, they had
no idea that they would go on to write over forty books between
them, balance their careers with their devotion to each other, and
to their cats, for decades. Then, in 2017, their life changed when
Patrick became seriously ill. The illness devastated them both. A
celebrated poet and an Officer of the Order of Canada, Crozier’s
memoir is a powerful portrait of a long marriage and a clear-eyed
account of grief, writing as consolation, and the significance of
September 2020 poetry. A must-read memoir from a significant voice in Canadian
McClelland & Stewart poetry and a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award
$29.95 and Governor General’s Literary Award winner.
Memoir
Magdalena
Wade Davis
Author and renowned National Geographic explorer Wade
Davis has enthralled people around the world by capturing
the essence of places; awakening in his readers a longing for
worlds thousands of miles away. Magdalena is a tribute and
love letter to Colombia, the first country that gave him license
to be free. A corridor of commerce, fountain of culture, and
wellspring for Colombian music, literature, poetry and prayer,
September 2020 the Magdalena has also served as the graveyard of the nation.
Knopf Canada And yet, always, it returns as a river of life.
$39.95
Nonfiction
The Pull of the Stars
Emma Donoghue
In an Ireland ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power
works at a hospital where expectant mothers diagnosed with
the new flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s world step
two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the
police, and a volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. These women
change each other’s lives in unexpected ways; they lose patients,
but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. Multi
award-winning author Emma Donoghue finds the light in the
July 2020 darkness in this new classic of hope and survival.
HarperCollins Canada
$33.99
Fiction
7
Love
Roddy Doyle
Two old friends reconnect in Dublin for a dramatic, revealing
evening of confidences—some planned, some spontaneous—in
this captivating new book from Roddy Doyle, author of
the Booker Prize-winning novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Old
friends Joe and Davy meet up one night at a Dublin restaurant
and discover that while they are not the men they used to be,
the memories of their past are anything but gone. Love offers a
moving portrait of what it means to put into words the many
Available forms love can take throughout our lives.
Knopf Canada
$24.95
Fiction
Butter Honey Pig Bread
Francesca Ekwuyasi
In Journey Prize nominee Francesca Ekwuyasi’s moving
novel about food, family and forgiveness, twin sisters, Kehinde
and Taiye live with their mother Kambirinachi, who feels she
is a spirit that plagues families with misfortune. Her fears come
true when Kehinde experiences a devastating childhood trauma.
Butter Honey Pig Bread then follows Kehinde as she moves away
and struggles to find ways to heal, while Taiye flees to London
and numbs the loss of the relationship with her twin through
October 2020 reckless hedonism. After a decade, Taiye and Kehinde return
Arsenal Pulp Press home to their mother and to face the wounds of the past.
$23.95
Fiction
The Swan Suit
Katherine Fawcett
In this short story collection, reimagined folktales appear
alongside new stories, serving to defamiliarize us from the
undeniably odd tales we continue to pass down, and lend
a vague familiarity to the stories of Katherine Fawcett’s
invention. Blending banalities of everyday human routines
and dilemmas with elements of fairy tales, magic, the macabre
and the downright inventive, Fawcett’s fiction is anything but
predictable. Together with her previous collection, The Little
Available Washer of Sorrows, Fawcett proves she’s mastered the short form.
Douglas & McIntyre
$22.95
Fiction, Stories
8
The Finder
Will Ferguson
From Will Ferguson, the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning
novelist of 419, comes a spellbinding literary adventure about
precious objects lost and found. Fabergé eggs; Buddy Holly’s
iconic glasses; Alfred Hitchcock’s missing film reel. Where are
they hiding? The Finder is a beguiling and wildly original tale
about the people, places, and things that are lost and found in
our world. Both an epic literary adventure and an escape into a
darkly thrilling world of deceit and its rewards, this novel asks:
September 2020 How far would you go to recover the things you’ve left behind?
Simon & Schuster CA
$24.99
Fiction
Outlasting the Weather
Patrick Friesen
Covering twenty-six years and selected from eight previous
volumes, the poems in Governor General’s Award for Poetry
winner Patrick Friesen’s collection reject wisdom; rather, they
are infused with the kind of knowledge that comes from having
weathered many seasons yet still remaining open to wonder.
Readers will notice the elemental in this collection and feel how
over time, the elements shape new worlds that Patrick Friesen
explores with a clear eye. Wind carves a stone bowl, the earth
August 2020 receives our dead. The poems are archaeological digs through
Anvil Press layers of a life lived without the certainty of belief.
$20.00
Poetry
Five Little Indians
Michelle Good
Years after being taken from their families and sent to a remote,
church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and
Maisie are released. Alone and without any skills, the teens find
their way to the unfamiliar world of the DTES. While striving
to find a place of safety and belonging, they come to face the
wild, divergent paths the future holds. With compassion and
insight, HarperCollins/UBC Prize award-winning Cree author
Michelle Good shares the quest of residential school survivors
Available to reconcile their past and ultimately, find a way forward.
HarperCollins Canada
$22.99
Fiction
9
Reaching Mithymna
Steven Heighton
In 2015, Steven Heighton, the Governor General’s Literary
Award-winning poet of The Waking Comes Late, volunteered on
the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis, on the isle of Lesvos
in Greece. Heighton worked on the landing beaches and in a
camp providing meals, clothes, and rest to refugees after their
crossing from Turkey. Heighton—alongside locals and under-
equipped aid workers—found himself in emergency roles for
which he was woefully unqualified. This is an account of the
September 2020 crisis and an exploration of the borders that divide us and the
Biblioasis ties that bind.
$22.95
Memoir
Crosshairs
Catherine Hernandez
The acclaimed novelist of Scarborough returns with a dystopian
account of a queer Black performer and allies joining forces to
battle a regime sending those deemed “Other” to concentration
camps. With prose described by Booklist as “raw yet beautiful,
disturbing yet hopeful,” Catherine Hernandez creates a
vision of the future that is terrifying because it is possible.
A cautionary tale filled with fierce and vibrant characters,
Crosshairs explores the universal desire to thrive, to love and to
September 2020 be loved as your true self.
HarperCollins Canada
$35.99
Fiction
Commanding Hope
Thomas Homer-Dixon
Thomas Homer-Dixon, the renowned Governor General’s
Non-Fiction Award-winning author of The Upside of Down, is
back with a highly anticipated new work. He turns his attention
to how we can shift human civilization onto a decisively
new path if we mobilize our minds, spirits, imaginations and
collective values. Commanding Hope marshals an accessible
argument for reinvigorating our cognitive strengths and
belief systems to affect urgent systemic change, strengthen
September 2020 our economies and cultures, and renew our hope in a positive
Knopf Canada future for everyone on Earth.
$36.00
Nonfiction
10Rabbit Foot Bill
Helen Humphreys
It’s 1947 in small-town Saskatchewan when Leonard Flint, a
lonely boy, befriends a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Their
friendship gives Leonard an escape from his life and the boy is
all but destroyed when Bill commits a sudden violent act and is
taken to prison. Years later, they’re reunited at a mental hospital
where Leonard begins to work and he soon becomes fixated
on learning the truth about the past. Based on a true story,
this page-turning novel from master stylist and multi-award
August 2020 winning author Helen Humphreys examines the frailty and
HarperCollins Canada resilience of the human mind.
$29.99
Fiction
The Certainties
Aislinn Hunter
From the acclaimed and Gerald Lampert Award-winning
author of Into the Early Hours and The World Before Us, Aislinn
Hunter, comes a vivid, moving novel about the entwined
fates of two very different refugees. Spanning 40 years and told
through the stories of Pia and the man who shared his history
with her when she was a child, The Certainties is about survival
in the face of fascism, forced migration and the cost of war.
It is also a moving and transformative blend of historical and
August 2020 speculative fiction, showing us what it means to bear witness
Knopf Canada and pay attention to those who seek refuge.
$29.95
Fiction
No Going Back
Sheena Kamal
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by CrimeReads,
LitHub and Book Riot, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize-winning
author Sheena Kamal’s No Going Back is the third novel
featuring the brilliant, fearless, deeply flawed Nora Watts.
When a triad enforcer places a target on her daughter’s back,
Nora’s vendetta escalates. From Canada to southeast Asia,
Nora pursues the man who is targeting her daughter Bonnie,
uncovering a shadowy criminal cabal. But soon, the trail will
Available lead full circle to Vancouver, the only home Nora’s ever known,
HarperCollins Canada and right to the heart of her brutal past.
$34.99
Fiction, Thriller
11Hope Matters
Elin Kelsey
Hope Matters boldly breaks through the narrative of doom
and gloom that has overtaken conversations about our future
to show why hope, not fear, is our most powerful tool for
tackling the planetary crisis. Award-winning author, scholar,
and educator Elin Kelsey reveals the collateral damage of
despair—from young people who honestly believe they have
no future to the link between climate anxiety and hyper-
consumerism—and argues that the catastrophic environmental
October 2020 news that dominates the media tells only part of the story.
Greystone Books
$22.95
Nonfiction
Indians on Vacation
Thomas King
Multi-award winning author and inaugural Massey Lectures
speaker Thomas King introduces readers to Bird and Mimi in
Indians on Vacation, a brilliant, poignant new novel on personal
and political histories. Inspired by postcards sent by their
Uncle Leroy nearly a hundred years earlier, the couple attempt
to trace Leroy and the family medicine bundle he took with
him to Europe. Witty, sly and powerful, this tale follows one
August 2020 couple’s wanderings through Europe’s famous capitals to reveal
HarperCollins Canada a complicated past, present and future.
$32.99
Fiction
A Good War
Seth Klein
Canada needs a bold blueprint to retool its economy and
politics for a zero-carbon future. In A Good War, author, activist
and founding director of BC’s Canadian Centre for Public
Alternatives chapter Seth Klein revisits and reframes strategies
from WWII, demonstrating that change can be productive,
creating jobs and reducing inequality while tackling our climate
obligations. From enlisting public support to launching new,
green economic models, Klein shows us a bold, practical and
September 2020 timely policy plan for a zero-carbon Canada.
ECW Press
$24.95
Nonfiction
12Petra
Shaena Lambert
Inspired by Petra Kelly, the original Green Party leader
who fought for the planet in 1980s Germany, Petra is a
captivating new novel about a woman who changed history
and transformed environmental politics—and who, like many
history-changing women, has been largely erased. Shaena
Lambert, a former Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Award
finalist and the bestselling author of Radiance, takes readers back
to the Cold War era to explore love, jealousy and the power
September 2020 of social change led by a woman taking on world superpowers
Knopf Canada while grappling with her own complex nature and love.
$24.95
Fiction
Disfigured
Amanda Leduc
Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when
you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? If every disabled
character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever
imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc, author of All
This, and Heaven Too (longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize),
and Communications Coordinator of the Festival of Literary
Diversity, looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to
Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and
Available behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new
Coach House Books kinds of stories that celebrate difference.
$19.95
Nonfiction
What Hurts Going Down
Nancy Lee
Award-winning novelist Nancy Lee’s latest collection of poetry
is a searing exploration of girlhood pre- and post- the #MeToo
movement. These poems confront how socially ingrained
violence and sexual power dynamics distort and dislocate
girlhood, womanhood, and relationships. Startling and visceral,
What Hurts Going Down deconstructs a lifetime of survival and
scrutinizes the changing realities of being female.
Available
McClelland & Stewart
$19.95
Poetry
13Consent
Annabel Lyon
Traversing familial duty, love, guilt, resentment and regret,
Consent centers two sets of sisters and the ways trauma forever
alters their relationships. Saskia and Jenny are twins who
are nothing alike. Sara and Mattie are sisters with a fraught
relationship punctuated by Mattie needing her sister to
be her caretaker. When Mattie’s ex-husband Robert turns
up, however, tragedy soon follows. From Annabel Lyon,
author of Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize-winning and
September 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlisted novel, The Golden Mean.
Knopf Canada
$29.95
Fiction
War: How Conflict Shaped Us
Margaret MacMillan
In War, acclaimed historian and Baillie Gifford Prize recipient
Margaret MacMillan analyzes the tangled history of
militarized conflict and society––and our complex feelings
towards it. She explores how changes in society have affected
the nature of war and how wars have changed the societies
that fight them. The book contains many revelations, such as
how war has often been a catalyst for science and innovation
and in the 20th century it did much for the position of women
September 2020 in society. But it also forces us to reflect on how war is
Penguin Canada intertwined with society, and why we choose to fight.
$35.00
Nonfiction
A Burning
Megha Majumdar
A Burning is an electrifying debut novel about three
unforgettable characters who seek to rise—to the middle
class, to political power, to fame in the movies—and find their
lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary
India. Megha Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance at a
breakneck pace on complex themes that read like a thriller: class,
fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound
obstacles while nurturing big dreams in a country spinning
Available toward extremism.
McClelland & Stewart
$32.00
Fiction
14They Said This Would Be Fun
Eternity Martis
A booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to
move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree.
But as one of the few Black students there, she soon discovered
that the campus experiences she’d seen in movies were far more
complex in reality. Over the next four years, Martis learned more
about what someone like her brought out in other people than
she did about herself. In this national bestseller, Martis connects
her own experience to the systemic issues plaguing students
Available today. It’s a memoir of pain, but also resilience.
McClelland & Stewart
$25.00
Nonfiction
Utopia Avenue
David Mitchell
Utopia Avenue may be the most extraordinary British band
you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic
scene in 1967, the band released only two LPs during its brief
blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and draughty ballrooms
to Top of the Pops and the Top 10. From the bestselling
author of Cloud Atlas and two-time Booker Prize finalist David
Mitchell comes the story of Utopia Avenue and its age; of riots
in the street and revolutions in the head; of drugs and thugs,
July 2020 schizophrenia, love, sex, grief, art; of the families we choose
Knopf Canada and the ones we don’t.
$36.00
Fiction
Washes, Prays
Noor Naga
Don’t miss RBC Bronwen Wallace Award winner Noor Naga’s
bracing debut: a novel-in-verse about a young woman’s romantic
relationship with a married man and her ensuing crisis of faith.
Coocoo’s faith is threadbare after years of bargaining with God to
end her loneliness and receiving no answer; then, she meets the
married Muhammad. Heartbreaking and hilarious, Washes, Prays
chronicles Coocoo’s spiraling descent: the transformation of her
love into something at first desperate and obsessive, then finally
Available cringing and animal, utterly without grace.
McClelland & Stewart
$19.95
Poetry
15Weather
Jenny Offill
From Jenny Offill, the beloved author of the nationwide
bestseller Dept. of Speculation comes Weather, a tour de force
about a family, and a nation, in crisis. For years Lizzie Benson
has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering
addict brother. When they seem to stabilize, Lizzie’s old mentor
Sylvia offers her a podcasting job to respond to left- and right-
winged listeners alike. As Lizzie dives into this polarized world,
she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own
Available garden once you’ve seen the flames beyond its walls.
Knopf
$31.95
Fiction
High School
Tegan Quin & Sara Quin
Discover multiple Juno Award-winning music icons Tegan
and Sara as you’ve never known them before in this intimate
and raw account of their formative years. Written in
alternating chapters from both of their points of view, High
School explores how the two twins grappled with their identity
and sexuality while also facing academic and familial pressure. A
transcendent story of first loves and first songs, it captures the
Available tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who
Simon & Schuster CA grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall
from one another.
$32.00
Memoir
A Song for the Dark Times
Ian Rankin
Award-winning author Ian Rankin’s 23rd novel in the John
Rebus series, A Song for the Dark Times, is deeply rooted in
the present. This thrilling new book explores the relationship
between crime, punishment and redemption and revolves
around two incidents: the disappearance of a man in which
Rebus’s daughter might be involved, and the murder of a
student that mystifies Edinburgh’s top detectives. In typical
Rankin fashion, this is an exciting, fast-paced page-turner for
October 2020
fans of John Rebus.
Hachette Group CA
$34.64
Fiction, Thriller
16Black Water
David A. Robertson
A Governor General’s Award winning-author known for
his writings about Indigenous Peoples in Canada, David A.
Robertson now turns his focus to his own personal journey.
Structured around a father-son trip to the northern trapline
where Robertson and his father reclaim their connection to the
land, Black Water shares yet another story: a young man seeking
to understand his father’s life; to come to terms with his anxiety,
and to finally piece together his own blood memory: the parts
September 2020 of his identity that are woven into the fabric of his DNA.
HarperCollins Canada
$32.99
Memoir
Jack
Marilynne Robinson
Jack is the fourth and last of Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels—one of the great works
of contemporary literature. It is 1956 and in the small town of
Gilead, Iowa, John Ames Boughton, the godson of John Ames,
is the black sheep of his family. He’s a ne-er do well and the
beloved prodigal son who falls in love with and marries Della,
a beautiful and brilliant African-American teacher he meets in
segregated St. Louis. Their fraught, beautiful romance is one of
September 2020 Robinson’s greatest achievements.
McClelland & Stewart
$32.00
Fiction
Noopiming
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Dionne Brand calls Noopiming “a novel that is as
philosophically generative as it is stylistically original... its
cumulative effect is a new cosmography.” A MacEwan Book
of the Year winner and finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust
Fiction Prize and Trillium Book Award for This Accident
of Being Lost, Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake
Simpson has returned with a bold and fierce reclamation of
Anishinaabe aesthetics in Noopiming.
September 2020
House of Anansi
$22.95
Fiction
17Hearts Amok
Kevin Spenst
In language that twists together hobo slang and flights
of troubadourish diction, Hearts Amok: A Memoir in Verse
scrutinizes the history of the love sonnet in Surrey, England
and simultaneously celebrates the tickings and tollings of one
love-struck heart in Surrey, British Columbia. Examining the
underpinnings of love, this book journeys from the Middle
Ages to the present where Pushcart Prize nominee Kevin
Spenst explores Vancouver’s dating scene to finally find the
Available love of his life.
Anvil Press
$18.00
Poetry
The Glass Hotel
Emily St. John Mandel
An instant #1 New York Times bestseller. From Emily St.
John Mandel, the Arthur C. Clarke and Toronto Book
Award-winning author of Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel is a
captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts
and moral compromise. When a woman disappears from a
container ship off the coast of Mauritania, a massive Ponzi
scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes
with it. Weaving together complicated worlds of ships and
Available skyscrapers, Mandel paints a breathtaking picture of greed,
HarperCollins Canada guilt, and the ghosts of our past.
$34.99
Fiction
Junebat
John Elizabeth Stintzi
An unforgettable poetry collection by rising star John
Elizabeth Stintzi, Junebat grapples with the pain of
uncertainty and the power of becoming. Set in a time of
deep isolation in New Jersey, Junebat maps a struggle against
depression as Stintzi questions and comes to grips with their
gender identity. Challenging, heartbreaking, and wonderfully
new, Junebat demolishes walls and shows that identity can
Available flourish with possibility and continual metamorphosis,
House of Anansi instead of being limited by confusion and contradiction.
$19.95
Poetry
18Vanishing Monuments
John Elizabeth Stintzi
Alani Baum, a non-binary photographer and teacher, hasn’t
seen their mother since they ran away at seventeen―almost
thirty years ago. But when they get a call from a doctor at their
mother’s assisted living facility, they learn that their mother’s
dementia has worsened, taking away her ability to speak. This
beautiful, tender debut novel by RBC Bronwen Wallace
Award for Emerging Writers winner John Elizabeth Stintzi
Available explores what haunts us most, bearing witness to grief over not
Arsenal Pulp Press only what is lost, but what remains.
$19.95
Fiction
We Two Alone
Jack Wang
Set on five continents and spanning nearly a century, Jack
Wang’s We Two Alone is a collection that traces the long arc
and evolution of the Chinese immigrant experience. From
the vulnerable and disenfranchised to the educated and elite,
the characters in these extraordinary stories embody the
diversity of the diaspora at key moments in history and in
contemporary times. Jack Wang, co-creator of Cozy Classics
September 2020 and Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlist and Journey
House of Anansi Prize longlisted author, has crafted deeply affecting stories
$19.95 that not only subvert expectations but contend with mortality
Fiction, Stories and delicately draw out the intimacies and failings of love.
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Kawai Strong Washburn
Nainoa Flores is known in Hawai’i as the boy who was
rescued by sharks. The strange abilities he acquires after this
begin to drive his family apart. His brother Dean is obsessed
with college athletics and wealth and fame, and sister Kaui
navigates an unforgiving academic workload to forge her own
independence. When supernatural events and tragedy revisit
the family, they have to confront the meaning of heritage
and the cost of survival. A stunning debut from Hawai‘i-born
Available Kawai Strong Washburn.
McClelland & Stewart
$32.95
Fiction
19Memorial
Bryan Washington
Bryan Washington, the PEN Prize and Dylan Thomas
Prize-winning author of the Best Book of the Year chart-
topper Lot, shares the story of Benson and Mike, two young
men uncertain if they’re still a couple. When Mike’s mother
visits and he learns his estranged father is dying in Osaka,
Mike heads to Japan to discover the truths about his family
and past. Meanwhile, Benson is stuck living with his lover’s
mother as an unconventional roommate, an absurd domestic
October 2020 situation that ends up meaning more to them than they could
Riverhead Books ever know.
$36.00
Fiction
Word Problems
Ian Williams
Math textbooks ask questions with easy answers: Billy has
five nickels, Jane gets to the train first, etc. In Word Problems,
2019 Giller Prize winner Ian Williams tries to force poetry
to offer us unambiguous answers by slotting tough questions
about racial inequality, our pernicious depression, and
troubled relationships between people into verse. If we rely
too heavily on science and math to understand the ineffable,
he suggests, we end up in the absurd position of asking the
September 2020 wrong questions altogether.
Coach House Books
$21.95
Poetry
Interior Chinatown
Charles Yu
From the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
and one of the award-winning screenwriters behind Westworld
comes Interior Chinatown. Willis Wu doesn’t see himself as
a protagonist, even in his own life. Every day he enters the
Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a cop show,
is in perpetual production. He wants to be Kung Fu Guy—the
best role that anyone like him can attain. His mother, however,
challenges him to be more. Playful but heartfelt, Interior
Available Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, masterly novel yet.
Pantheon Books
$34.95
Fiction
20Margaret Marlon Naomi Tanya Desmond
Atwood James Klein Talaga Cole
The Vancouver Writers Fest’s Books & Ideas Audio
series is a selection of some of the Festival’s most
celebrated conversations.
Books & Ideas Audio features authors speaking
to their work, philosophy, politics and more, led
by talented moderators our audiences have come
to know and anticipate.
You can subscribe to Books & Ideas Audio on your
favourite streaming platform. With new episodes
monthly, there’s always something new to enjoy.
writersfest.bc.ca/audioseries
SUBSCRIBE TO BOOKS & IDEAS AUDIO
21Children’s / YA Titles
Discover the work of writers including:
Steven Heighton Janice Lynn Mather
Michelle Kadarusman Kenneth Oppel
Sheena Kamal David A. Robertson
Jess Keating Aleksandra Ross
Wesley King Hermione Tankard
Tanya Lloyd Kyi Jeremy Tankard
For an up-to-date line-up, visit our website at writersfest.bc.ca.
22The Stray and the Strangers
Steven Heighton
National award-winning author Steven Heighton’s first
children’s book, The Stray and the Strangers, is about a stray
dog named Kanella. She’s scrawny and nervous and afraid of
the cats and dogs that compete for handouts on the pier. One
day, a dinghy filled with refugees comes to the shore. Kanella
befriends an aid worker and a little boy and settles into a
routine at the refugee camp. But the boy is taken away and the
camp is eventually dismantled. Kanella is homeless once again;
September 2020 but just when hope seems lost, the aid worker comes back for
Groundwood Books her, to give her a new home.
$14.95
Grades 1–4
Music for Tigers
Michelle Kadarusman
Middle schooler and passionate violinist Louisa is spending
the summer with her Australian relatives in the Tasmanian
rainforest. It’s an intriguing place with strange creatures and
weird noises in the night, and a quirky boy named Colin. And
then there is a sanctuary for Tasmanian tigers, believed to have
gone extinct. When the sanctuary is threatened by a mining
operation, Louisa realizes that the key to saving the tiger is her
Available very own music. Will her plan work or will the Tasmanian tiger
Pajama Press
disappear once again? A delightful new work from Governor
General Award finalist and author of the Junior Library Guild
$22.95
selection Girl of the Southern Sea, Michelle Kadarusman.
Grades 4–7
Fight Like a Girl
Sheena Kamal
From the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize-winning author of
The Lost Ones, Sheena Kamal: Trisha is trying to break the
cycle of violence in her family by channeling her impulses into
kickboxing. Her father comes and goes from their house, every
punch he lands on her mother carving itself indelibly into
Trisha’s mind. But one night he wanders out drunk in front of
Trisha’s car while she’s practicing driving and is killed, and her
mother seems strangely at peace. Trisha doesn’t know what
Available happened, but she’s afraid it’s going to happen again because her
Penguin Teen mom has a new man in her life and the pattern is repeating.
$21.99
Grades 8–12
23Bunbun & Bonbon: Fancy Friends
Jess Keating
A lonely bunny named Bunbun befriends a fancy candy named
Bonbon in this adorable graphic novel for emerging readers.
Bunbun had it all: a delightful Bunbun nose, a winning Bunbun
smile, a ridiculously cute Bunbun tail and not one, but two
adorable Bunbun ears. But Bunbun didn’t have a friend—
until she met Bonbon. Learning how to be fancy and eating
donuts for lunch are two of the duo’s many adventures in
September 2020 this irresistible young graphic novel by acclaimed author and
Scholastic Canada illustrator Jess Keating.
$9.99
Grades 2–5
Nikki Tesla and the Traitors
of the Lost Spark
Jess Keating
In the third book in Jess Keating’s Elements on Genius series,
Genius Academy is under attack! When a routine operation
goes horribly wrong, Nikki Tesla and the team take the blame
for an international incident of epic proportions, and the school
is shut down indefinitely. A little creative “research” tells them
someone is planning biological warfare on a grand scale. But to
July 2020 get to the truth and clear their name, Nikki will have to find a
Scholastic Canada miraculous antidote that can stop a criminal mastermind from
$22.99 blowing up the whole world.
Grades 3–7
Sara and the Search for Normal
Wesley King
Sara wants one thing: to be normal. What she has instead are
multiple diagnoses from her doctor that cause her to isolate
herself. She rarely speaks at school, and doesn’t have any friends.
In group therapy, she meets talkative and outgoing Erin, who
doesn’t believe in “normal.” Suddenly, Sara finds herself at the
movies, at a birthday party, and with someone to talk about her
crush with. But there’s more to Erin than her cheerful exterior,
and Sara wonders if helping Erin will mean sacrificing their
Available friendship. From Wesley King, the Edgar Award–winning
Simon & Schuster CA author of OCDaniel, named a Bank Street Best Book of the Year
$17.99 and Canada’s Silver Birch Award recipient.
Grades 4–7
24This is Your Brain on Stereotypes
Tanya Lloyd Kyi
From the time we’re born, our brains sort and label the world
around us—a skill that’s crucial for survival. But, when we do
this to people, it can cause great harm. Tanya Lloyd Kyi’s
newest release is a primer to the science behind stereotypes
that will help young people understand why we classify people
and how we can change our thinking. It shares the history
September 2020 of identifying stereotypes, secret biases in our brains and
Kids Can Press current research into how science can help us overcome them,
$17.99 ultimately offering hope for an equal future.
Grades 6–9
Facing the Sun
Janice Lynn Mather
Set in the Caribbean, Facing the Sun revolves around four
friends―Eve, Faith, KeeKee and Nia―who are facing
unexpected changes in their lives: Eve’s father is diagnosed with
cancer and she’s fraught with worry; Faith comes from a broken
home and can’t get the man she loves; KeeKee is estranged
from her father and suffers a betrayal; and Nia wants to escape
her overprotective mother. To make matters worse, a hotel
August 2020
developer purchases their community’s beloved beach. Will this
be a make or break summer for the four friends? An exciting
Simon & Schuster CA
new work from Learning to Breathe author and a Governor
$23.99
General’s Literary Award finalist, Janice Lynn Mather.
Grades 9+
Hatch
Kenneth Oppel
Internationally beloved author Kenneth Oppel introduced
us to alien plants with deadly toxins in Bloom. In the first
book, Seth, Anaya and Petra found themselves strangely
immune to the toxins and combatted them. Now in Hatch, the
second novel in the trilogy, the rain brings eggs that hatch
into large, dangerous insects. But this time, the three friends
cannot help because they’re locked away in a government lab.
Oppel escalates the threats and ratchets up the tension in this
September 2020 adventure with an alien twist.
HarperCollins Canada
$21.99
Grades 4–7
25The Barren Grounds
David A. Robertson
Governor General’s Literary Award-winning author David
A. Robertson’s new novel revolves around two Indigenous
children, Morgan and Eli, who live in foster care. One day, they
find a portal to another reality, Askí, bringing them onto frozen,
barren grounds, where they meet Ochek (Fisher). The only
hunter supporting his starving community, Misewa, Ochek
teaches them traditional ways to survive. As the need for food
becomes desperate, they embark on a dangerous mission before
September 2020 winter freezes everything, including them.
Puffin Canada
$21.99
Grades 4–7
Don’t Call the Wolf
Aleksandra Ross
A fierce young queen, neither human nor lynx, fights to
protect a forest abandoned by humans. A young soldier
searches for the brother who disappeared into the forest. A
fearsome and vengeful dragon haunts their nightmares and
their steps. When these three paths cross, shapeshifter queen
and reluctant hero strike a deal that may finally turn the tide
against the rising hordes of darkness. Ren will help Lukasz––if
he promises to slay the dragon. Aleksandra Ross’s Don’t
Available
Call the Wolf is a gorgeously imagined fantasy full of tension,
HarperCollins Canada
romance and folklore.
$23.99
Grades 8+
Yorick and Bones
Jeremy Tankard and Hermione Tankard
Yorick is a skeleton who was just dug up after a few hundred
years of sleep. He speaks like it too. “Forsooth, my joy, I barely
can contain!” Bones is the hungry dog who did the digging.
Though he cannot speak, he can chomp. What will become
of these two unlikely companions? Will Yorick ever find the
friend he seeks? Will Bones ever find a tasty treat that does not
talk back? The course of true friendship never did run smooth.
Available This is the first book in a rib-tickling, heartfelt full-colour
HarperCollins Canada graphic novel series by celebrated duo Jeremy Tankard and
$21.00 Hermione Tankard.
Grades 3–7
26The Summer Book Club
featuring Roddy Doyle
Saturday, September 12 at 2pm PDT
Books available for pick-up or delivery from June 23, 2020
Book + Ticket price: $25 (+ shipping, if requested)
In a special Vancouver Writers Fest member-exclusive book club event,
Booker Prize-winning author and beloved novelist Roddy Doyle shares
insights and answers questions on his newest, highly-anticipated release,
Love. One of this summer’s must reads, ticket-buying members will
receive a copy of the book in late June, culminating in an intimate, virtual
Q&A session Saturday, September 12 at 2pm PDT.
Known for his powerful representations of fraught social and historical
issues in Ireland, Doyle’s writing also carries with it rich humour and
deeply affectionate portrayals of Dublin’s working class. Considered by
many to be the father of the modern Irish novel, Doyle’s Love offers a
vibrant and moving addition to the canon. Learn more about Love on page
8 of this guide.
writersfest.bc.ca
27Exceptional Books & Ideas
in 35+ events with 65+ authors
October 19-25, 2020
This year, in addition to our week-long Festival in October, the
Vancouver Writers Fest will present 10 events throughout
the Fall, running from September to December. In total, we will
welcome more than 65 authors in a variety of online formats for
literary events and immersive conversations for all ages.
Discover the carefully curated collection of books
at the centre of these events in our 2020 Reading List.
This Reading List represents all confirmed VWF authors as of
press time. For additions please check our website regularly.
The program guide will be available
online and in print in late August.
Visit writersfest.bc.ca for book recommendations,
event previews, tickets and more.You can also read
