Tickets for the Whistler Writers Festival (October 12-16) go on sale Aug. 21. This year’s festival is once again in-person and online, and features the best local, Canadian, and international writers.

AUGUST 8, 2023: Whistler, BC — Tickets for the 22nd edition of the Whistler Writers Festival go on sale Aug. 21, 2023.

There are 19 reading events and 10 workshop in 2023, featuring favourites like the Thrills and Chills: Mystery and Crime Writers Panel, the Literary Cabaret, Word of Mouth: Telling our Stories in the Oral Tradition, and the beloved poetry, writers of fiction, and writers of non-fiction panels. The festival has brought back the Sunday Booktalk & Breakfast, and added two unique and brand new events to the Saturday evening line-up. There is something for everyone, including a storytime for children called Picture This! 

This year’s event also features some timely and topical readings, including Fire Weather: In Conversation with John Vaillant. Leslie Anthony leads a conversation with Vaillant about his latest book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, which tells the story of the 2016 Fort McMurray fire in peerless detail. The poetry panel will do a deep dive into eco-poetry, which is the art of wrestling with and showing the reader the work can be done to change and fix our relationship with the planet. Popular and brand new workshops exploring memoir, writing non-fiction, plotting, and more are all on offer.

“The beautiful thing about this year’s festival is how we’re bringing together incredibly topical non-fiction alongside some of the most exciting literary and commercial fiction of 2023,” said Rebecca Wood Barrett, festival artistic director. “We’re not stopping there either. We have two comedy performances, a Sunday breakfast with Mona Awad, Kevin Chong, Alicia Elliott, and Rowan Jetté Knox, and we’ve added a discussion about cultural touchstones like BookTok, Hollywood deals, and AI. This year’s festival is incredibly expansive when it comes to topics, but it all still comes back to the importance of community and creativity.”

Saturday night is a big one this year with the Saturday Night Special: A Killer Night of Comedy, Murder and Mayhem Featuring Brent Butt. Butt reads from his dark and twisted thriller, Huge, and is joined with thriller-themed improv from Whistler’s own Laugh out LIVE! comedy troupe. Tickets to this event include a copy of Huge, killer appies, and a criminally delicious drink. 

Before all the comedy on Oct. 14, Esi Edugyan (Washington Black, Out of the Sun: Art, Race and the Future, We Are Bone and Earth, Dreaming of Elsewhere, and Half-Blood Blues) sits down with author Jasmine Sealy to traverse a wide-ranging conversation about Edugyan’s body of work, and her latest role as the chair of judges for the Booker Prize.

For the first year since 2020, the festival is returning to a mostly in-person event, although our workshops and select readings will be offered online so that people can participate where it’s most comfortable for them.

“Community has always been such an important part of the festival,” said Wood Barrett. “There is our Sea to Sky community, our audience, our literary and creative community, and the community that joins us online from all over the world. We want to provide a festival that meets people where they’re at, and this year we’re really going to be able to do that with how we’ve organized and offered the events.”

On Monday, Oct. 16 at 8:00 p.m., there is an extra festival day and special encore performance of Writer’s Block Party with Laugh Out LIVE! 

For the first time, the Whistler Writers Festival is offering early-bird ticket pricing. Get 15 percent off tickets until Sept. 15, and 10 percent off tickets until Oct. 1. 

The Whistler Writers Festival is Oct. 12-16, 2023. Visit whistlerwritersfest.com for the latest news and announcements, and for a list of authors and events.