Elizabeth Hay, left, a Canadian novelist and short story writer, sits with Hal Wake, artistic director of the Vancouver Writers Festival.
As artistic director of the Vancouver Writers Fest, Hal Wake has programmed a dozen festivals. This year's – the festival's 30th edition and Mr. Wake's final VWF – was no different, he says.
"Months before we started, we sat down to talk about how should we approach this? And should we do anything different? Should we be looking at something bigger? And what should we do? And we decided let's just do what we've discovered is special about our festival," Mr. Wake said, referring to discussions with his artistic associate Clea Young.
That translates, he said, to holding off on making decisions early, waiting to see who's available and what their books are about, then sending invitations based on the kind of chemistry they believe they can create. Once that core begins to be established, they look for other authors and books that will fit.
"Every [year of the] festival has its own character," he said. "So we didn't really do anything different than we've ever done. I would say it's possible that publishers were more generous to us with their awareness that they want this to be a special festival."
The program for this year's festival, which runs from Oct. 16-22, features more events and writers – more than 110 – than previous years. Among the big names scheduled to attend are Margaret Atwood, who was at the very first event – when it was called the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival – in 1988.
Doug Saunders, a columnist for The Globe and Mail will be at the festival with his new book, Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough, as will former Globe reporter Omar El Akkad, with his dystopian novel American War.
Other prominent Canadian fiction writers scheduled to attend include Barbara Gowdy, who is out with her first novel in a decade, Little Sister; Claire Cameron (The Last Neanderthal); Karen Connelly (The Change Room); Wayne Johnston (First Snow, Last Light); broadcaster and Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Linden MacIntyre (The Only Café); Dennis Lee (Heart Residence, a poetry collection); Alison Pick (Strangers with the Same Dream); and Kathleen Winter (Lost in September).
Nicole Krauss, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The History of Love, will be at the festival with her latest novel, Forest Dark. Nathan Englander, whose last short-story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, will be at the festival with his new novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth. (Both novels, coincidentally, take place in the Israeli desert.)
British writer Jon McGregor, whose debut novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, is at the festival with his new work, Reservoir 13.
The essay will be in the spotlight at this year's festival, with a number of prominent essayists attending.
Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan, a three-time Man Booker Prize nominee, has recently published his collection The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age, which includes an essay that came out of a commission to ghostwrite Julian Assange's autobiography. (Things didn't go as planned, and his book was eventually published as an unauthorized biography.)
Canadian-raised New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik will be at the festival with his new book At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York, a memoir about his move to the Big Apple in the 1980s. Another Canadian living in New York, Durga Chew-Bose, will be at the festival with her debut collection of essays, Too Much and Not the Mood. Arab-Israeli columnist, novel and TV writer Sayed Kashua, who now lives in the United States, will be in Vancouver with a new collection of humorous essays, Native: Dispatches from an Israeli-Palestinian Life.
A number of prominent Canadian non-fiction authors scheduled to attend include former cabinet minister and hockey star Ken Dryden, with his examination of concussions, Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador, and the Future of Hockey; Sandra Perron's military memoir Out Standing in the Field: A Memoir by Canada's First Female Infantry Officer; Chris Turner's The Path: The People, Pipelines, and Politics of the Oil Sands; and journalist Paul Watson's Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition.
One panel, Screen Gems, will feature Hart Hanson, the creator of the TV series Bones (out with his first novel, The Driver); Tom Perrotta, whose novels – including Election, Little Children and The Leftovers – have been adapted for film and TV (his new book is Mrs. Fletcher); and Esta Spalding, a children's author whose screenwriting credits include Masters of Sex.
"It gives us an opportunity to talk about that relationship as writers between writing for the page and writing your own work," Mr. Wake said. "And let's face it, there can't be more polar opposites in experience than the lonely writer sitting in a room by themselves and being part of the Hollywood machine."
The festival's final event will put Ms. Atwood and Mr. O'Hagan on stage together to discuss the role of the writer in difficult social and political times.
"Whenever Margaret's onstage with somebody equally smart … she just lights up. There's nothing that she likes better than trading ideas and jokes with smart people. Andrew O'Hagan will be her match in the insight that he brings and the charm and the wit," Mr. Wake said. "So the final event will be a very nice way for me to end my 12-year stint."
Marsha Lederman