Monia Mazigh on Risk

When I was a little girl I loved the carousel at the fair but my favourite ride was a rocket space ship because it made me feel like I am traveling in the sky among planets and stars. I closed my eyes and let my imagination run wild as the heavy rocket filled with screaming […]

Mark Leiren-Young on Risk

As any reader knows it’s always risky to chase a whale – and I’ve pursued Moby Doll three times longer than crazy Captain Ahab searched for Moby Dick. Almost twenty years ago I pitched the story of the first ever killer whale displayed in captivity as a book, a film, an article and a radio […]

John MacLachlan Gray on Risk

“Risk” is something I’ve never quantified or even thought about, because my expectations have always been so low. Growing up in Nova Scotia, to suggest that you wanted to write books or plays was like saying you wanted to join the circus as a fire eater. So when I began writing, I assumed I’d live […]

Helen Humphreys on Risk

  Increasingly, I have come to dislike both the limits of genre and the invisibility of process. With The Ghost Orchard, I wanted to push at both of these boundaries by mixing non-fiction, memoir, and fiction, and by showing the research for the book as part of the book itself. I was using mostly original […]

2017 Comedy Quickies

Submit your funniest sketch, stand-up routine, original song or monologue, and we’ll pick our favourites to showcase at the beautiful Maury Young Arts Centre on Oct. 12, 2017, with a chance to win hundreds of dollars in cash and prizes. Submissions are due Aug. 15.

Book Review: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Book Review by Dee Raffo It’s 1947, and the chaotic aftermath of World War II reverberates across the globe as we join protagonist Charlie St. Claire, who is unmarried, pregnant, and on the hunt for her missing cousin, Rose. Her life intersects with that of Eve Gardiner, a decorated spy during World War I who […]

Book Review: Dragon Springs Road by Janie Chang

Book Review by Susan Oakey-Baker Janie Chang, local Vancouver author of the celebrated novel Three Souls, tackles racism, women’s rights, belonging and what we will ultimately do to survive, in this enchanting historical novel about an abandoned child and a fox spirit living on an ancient Chinese estate. At the turn of the century, amidst […]

Book Review: The Fashion Committee by Susan Juby

Review by Libby McKeever When you are driven by passion and the need to finally get the break you’ve been yearning for, it can lead a person to be ruthless and frankly, do bizarre things. Charlie Dean has inherited her mother’s extraordinary fashion and design flair. But her mother’s been dead for years, overdosing in […]

Nearly Normal: A book review of Cea Sunrise Person’s latest memoir

Nearly Normal: Surviving the Wilderness, My Family and Myself A book review by Rebecca Wood Barrett Cea Sunrise Person’s second memoir, Nearly Normal: Surviving the Wilderness, My Family and Myself, is a follow-up to her first book North of Normal. She cracks open her past, and events that have not been revealed before, to take […]

Thanks Again for Another Incredible Festival

Another Year, Another Festival, A Grateful Heart “A grateful heart is a magnet for miracles.” Anonymous It wasn’t too long ago that I wasn’t sure I would have been able to write the words, another year, another festival. They come naturally now as if there is no question we will be back, bigger and stronger next year. […]