LitFest 2023

Fresh off of recording the audiobook version of the acclaimed Kinauvit?: What’s Your Name?, we host author Norma Dunning and the audiobook's director Brenley Charkow in a conversation about the project, and the process of making an audiobook.

Have you ever wondered about humanity's future and how technology will continue to drastically change our everyday lives? From where we’ll live, what we’ll eat and look like, and how we’ll travel, bestselling author Jay Ingram looks at cutting-edge science and technologies that are on the cusp of changing everything in The Future of Us.

On Halloween night in 2011, a girl is killed on Armstrong’s railroad tracks and Emelia returns home to comfort her terrified mother as her community reels in chaos. Back on the tracks, she begins to question her own girlhood twenty-years previous, and if it was as idyllic as she’d remembered. This event will be a dazzling and experimental collaboration with the digital-art technology team at Moment Discovery. Please note this event does not include catering.

Discover four of the year's most buzzed about books in this not-to-be-missed showcase. Wide-ranging and vital in subject and style, get a sizzling sampling of these must read titles! Featuring Sheima Benembarek, Michael Lista, Emelia Symington-Fedy, and Jennifer Bowering Delisle. The Books with Buzz cabaret will feature cellist Nicholas Yee and guitarist David Jay, playing songs selected by the authors based on a meaningful connection to their books.

In this masterclass, Michael Lista will walk participants through the fraught landscape of modern crime reporting—how to secure the trust of sources, how to navigate the byzantine court system, and how to ultimately metabolize the pain of subjects into a published story that is both a public good and a commercial product, during a golden age for true crime.

Join Patricia Westerhof, writing coach, novelist, and author of the newly released book The Canadian Guide to Creative Writing and Publishing, as she gives an overview of the publishing opportunities available to new and emerging writers, and answers questions about paths to publication.

Journalist Sheima Benembarek offers an unprecedented glimpse into the sex lives of female and gender-expansive Muslims living across Canada and the United States.

Join writers Dan Clapson and Twyla Campbell for an evening of light bites and deep conversation about their new cookbook PRAIRIE. This gorgeous cookbook celebrates Prairie ingredients, seasonality, and presents the idea of "Prairie cooking" in contemporary and creative ways. We’ll sample some tasty bites, including from local chef (and Prairie contributor) Steve Brochu, and we’ll hear about their experiences bringing the book to life! The tasting menu will include a sampling of three vegetarian recipes from the book, and a liqueur. Wine, coffee and tea will also be available.

What lives in the Heart of our City? What is your place there? Join Guest Curator Anna Marie Sewell and Dr. Don Perkins for a writing workshop wherein your task is to immerse yourself in the territory at the centre of Edmonton; reconsider, rediscover, and report back on the built, rebuilt, and yet-to-be landscape we share. Come prepared for 30 minutes outdoors. Writings created in this workshop will become part of a presentation at LitFest’s Brunch of Writers on October 22.

For the past seven years, The Polyglot, an award-winning local magazine, has provided an important platform for artists, writers, and translators to creatively engage and experiment with their languages. In this reading and panel, past contributors will captivate you with readings in a multitude of languages, including Afrikaans, Chinese, Danish, Filipino, Haitian Creole, Italian, Kapampangan, Spanish, and Xhosa. The magazine’s twelfth issue, Resist—a collaboration with the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and guest edited by Leilei Chen 莫譯—will be launched. This stunning edition includes innovative translations that transcend the confines of Canada’s colonial languages, English and French, and even venture into the realm of visual translation.

From AskMen senior editor and non-binary writer Alex Manley comes The New Masculinity: A Roadmap for a 21st-Century Definition of Manhood, a guide for escaping the shackles of toxic masculinity, unlearning what it means to be a man, and pushing back against the various ways masculinity teaches people to hurt rather than help, and to harm rather than heal. Manley charts a course for a wholly new future of the self that’s neither particularly manly nor particularly masculine, but responsive, invested, and caring. Please note this event does not include catering.

Award-winning journalist Marsha Lederman will moderate this distinguished panel, sparked by her Globe and Mail opinion piece earlier this year. In that piece, 'U.S.-style book bans could happen in Canada too, if we’re not careful', Lederman charts the rise of censorship in the US, and cautions Canadians not to be complacent about our intellectual freedom.

In Kiss the Red Stairs, a compelling memoir by award-winning journalist Marsha Lederman, the author delves into her parents’ Holocaust stories in the wake of her own divorce, investigating how trauma migrates through generations with empathy, humour, and resilience. Please note this event does not include catering, and no outside food is allowed.

Five extraordinary authors read from their latest works inspired by and/or interrogating one of the most pressing issues of our time - our changing (and changed) climate. The panel features: Alice Major (Knife on Snow), Tim Lilburn (Numinous Seditions), Martin Tweedale (Making Wonderful), Gerald McMaster and Nina Vincent (Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity).

Joignez-vous à nous lors d’un Midi littéraire sous le signe du feu, avec la romancière et essayiste féministe Martine Delvaux, qui discutera de son ouvrage Pompières et pyromanes (2021) avec la poète Evelyne Gagnon. This year, LitFest and the Centre for Literatures in Canada / Centre de littératures au Canada are co-hosting 2 events in the CLC’s readings and conversations series, "Air and Fire / l'air et le feu." The first event in the series is an online reading by Martine Delvaux, author of Pompières et Pyromanes, followed by a conversation led by Dr. Evelyne Gagnon. This event will be completely en français.  

In this nonfiction anthology, writers and artists from different backgrounds explore their complex relationships to fibre arts and the intersection of creative practice and identity, technology, climate change, trauma, politics, chronic illness, and disability. We'll have a lively conversation about the book, and revel in the gorgeous surroundings of the Alberta Craft Council Gallery

Five minutes, ten storytellers, audience judges, cash prize, total glory! Edmonton Story Slam is an open mic storytelling competition open to anyone with a five minute story to share. Come tell a story or just enjoy the show! Storytellers sign up at 7pm.

In Ghosts in a Photograph, award winning writer Myrna Kostash explores the lives of her grandparents, all of whom moved from Galicia, now present-day Ukraine, to Alberta at the turn of the twentieth century. Discovering a packet of family mementos, Kostash begins questioning what she knows about her extended families’ pasts and whose narrative is allowed to prevail in Canada. Please note this event does not include catering.

One of Canada's most exciting and versatile artists, Vivek Shraya's body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre and film. This event will feature an advanced screening of episodes from the upcoming CBC Gem series How to Fail as a Popstar and a brief performance from Vivek's play that the series is based on. All this, and a fascinating conversation about adapting literary work for different mediums.

This year, LitFest and the CLC are co-hosting 2 events in the CLC’s readings and conversations series, "Air and Fire / l'air et le feu." This event features a shared reading and conversation between Trina Moyles, author of Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest and Omar Mouallem, co-author (with firefighter Damian Asher) of Inside the Inferno: A Firefighter’s Story of the Brotherhood that Saved Fort McMurray. Please note this event does not include food.

This beautifully intimate memoir-in-pieces uses one woman's life-long love affair with pop culture as a revelatory lens to explore family, identity, belonging, grief, and the power of female rage. After this event, stick around for superstars of the Edmonton comedy scene and quiz masters extraordinaire, join the Lucius brothers for SUPERQUIZ! a game that will test your wits and bust your guts! Prizes and laughs galore! Starts at 8:15pm. Your ticket to Jen Sookfong Lee's event, get's you into SUPERQUIZ for no additional charge!

Superstars of the Edmonton comedy scene and quiz masters extraordinaire, join the Lucius brothers for SUPERQUIZ! a game that will test your wits and bust your guts! Prizes and laughs galore!

Writing Trauma with Traumatizing the Reader looks at the tools and methods a writer can use to revisit trauma without reliving it. It also explores the responsibility the writer has in relaying that trauma to the reader. And what to do when that internal editor (not to mention the external ones) starts asking - Is there such a thing as ‘too much information?’

A member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and a descendent of Metis leader Jim Brady, John Brady has worked to move carefully between these two nations – to learn their stories, honour their traditions and reclaim their languages, all of which were nearly lost to him. With honesty, a poet’s turn of phrase and a bit of sly humour, John Brady pulls us deep into the life he has lived in Kistahpinanihk and asks us to consider what life could be like in a New North Territory.

LitFest is so pleased to host the launch of this vital book, with an in-depth conversation about its creation with author Alexandra Zabjek. Beginning with the women who founded the first shelters, and continuing through the establishment of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters to the present day, We Need to Do This is a story of hope and survival for the women’s shelter movement and for the mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and daughters it continues to serve.

Back by popular demand, this year's Memoir Hour features three of the year's most exceptional reads. Deeply moving and complex, each of these books offer compelling glimpses into the role of arts and culture in our lives. Hosted by Sarah Chan and featuring authors Jen Sookfong Lee, Thom Ernst and Jeannie Marshall.

The popular Sunday brunch on the final day of the fest returns! Join our host Casey Plett as we hear readings from Martin Tweedale (Making Wonderful), John Brady McDonald (Carrying it Forward), and the co-founders of Converse and Cook, an organization that works to build bridges in our community by using food as a gateway. We will also debut the Braided Poem created from our Community Writes project earlier in the week, performed by Anna Marie Sewell, Don Perkins, and Nermeen Youssef. All this, and a fabulous buffet brunch, courtesy of The Westin Hotel.

How do I write about something true that happened? How do I write something I think of as a secret? What might people think when it's published? How do I even get started when the thought of showing my writing to someone freezes my productivity? This masterclass is designed to get you comfortable with writing personal non-fiction, and how to get started when you're completely at loose ends.