Five Vancouver Writers Fest events to add to your must-see list

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One of the great things about fall, besides it being sweater weather, is the Vancouver Writers Fest (VWF).

This year, the 39th-annual festival, running Oct. 18-25, is hosting more than 90 events and welcoming 150-plus authors from Canada and around the globe.

Kicking the festivities off is the festival’s always-entertaining and insightful opening night event. Hosted by CBC’s Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Grand Openings: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice will take place Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the Vancouver Playhouse. Authors taking to the stage in a wide range of sequential talks include: Ayad Akhtar, Cory Doctorow, Tayari Jones, Ruth Ozeki, Ece Temelkuran, John Vaillant, Jesse Wente, and Jody Wilson-Raybould.

It’s worth noting that the authors speaking on opening night are also taking part in other events during the festival. VWF also has a very robust livestream program for those who are unable to attend in person.

With such a packed program to pick from, we thought we’d lend a hand and suggest five events that would make great additions to your VWF plan.

Patrick deWitt in Conversation

Oct. 20, 6 p.m., Waterfront Theatre

Former Vancouver Islander and bestselling author of The Librarianist and The Sisters Brothers will be in talking with Canadian writer David Moscrop about his new novel Dodge City.

Another character rich offering the novel follows a 23-year-old Lee on a speed (the drug) – fueled road trip across the U.S. as he flees Los Angeles and the Vietnam War draft for the safe haven of Canada.

Signed up to a drive-away car delivery service, Lee throws his suitcase and a bag of amphetamines into a new Jaguar and heads east and north across the country, making stops in four different towns to visit his family. And yes, his family is complicated.

An Evening with Colin James

Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m., York Theatre

You’ve listened to his music for years and likely seen him live. Now you can get an understanding of where the Canadian blues icon came from as James sits down to discuss his recently released memoir Playing the Changes: A Musician’s Memoir.

In Playing the Changes, James, who calls North Vancouver home, takes fans back to his childhood in Saskatchewan to a home where music was always played. As a kid, with hypochondriac tendencies, he learned the guitar by playing along to blues records and then began performing with musicians much older than him. And in what can be described as music lore he got his big break when as a teenager he was asked to throw a band together and open for legendary guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. The memoir ends at James’s first record deal.

Marlon James

Oct. 22, 8 p.m., Waterfront Theatre

The winner of the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, a fictionalized look at the attempted assassination of Bob Marley, James is back with The Disappearers, a novel that the New York Times said is “the novel of the decade, if not the century,” and which has recently been named to the shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize which will be announced Nov. 9.

Exploring queer life and historical reckonings in Jamaica in the 1980s and 1990s The Disappearers, tells the story a group of gay men in Kingston staging the play Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1967) by Canadian playwright John Herbert. The play, then unknown for the most part, is now the most published play in Canada and has been translated into 40 languages and produced in over 100 countries. James will be speaking with CBC’s Elamin Abdelmahmoud.

Sally Hayden: This Is Also a Love Story

Oct 23, 1 p.m., Revue Stage

Veteran foreign correspondent Sally Hayden has spent her career on the frontlines of history covering some of the darkest crises of our time for many outlets around the globe including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

While she has certainly seen and reported on some of the worst of humans, her nonfiction book This Is Also a Love Story, sets out a different path and breaks out of the darkness to tell stories of the goodness she’s seen around the world. And frankly, we all need to be reminded of those kinds of stories and those kinds of people.

Hayden will be in conversation with journalism instructor and former CBC broadcaster Kathryn Gretsinger.

Kliph Nesteroff: Sorry, We’re Funny

Oct. 24, 8 p.m., Revue Stage

Speaking of the need for some light in the world, this event totally checks that box.

Renowned comedy historian and author of Kliph Nesteroff has pulled together more than century of comedy history in his new book Sorry, We’re Funny: How Canada Became a Comedy Powerhouse.

A definitive record of how Canadian funny people pushed through all manner of roadblocks and classic Canadian humility to build Canada into a true comedy force, the book, not out until Nov. 17, has received great early reviews as well stamps of approval from comedy heavyweights including: writer/director and comedy expert Judd Apatow and Canadian comedy legend Dan Ackroyd.

Nesteroff will be sharing some smart things about silly people in this event with interviewer, the very funny Vancouver comedian and writer Charlie Demers.