The Whistler Writers Festival has something for everyone – readers, writers, established authors, poetry fans, dedicated non-fiction readers, murder-mystery aficionados – with events for every interest and age. Tickets now on sale!
There are 14 reading events and 10 workshops over four days including feature guests Glenn Dixon, Tara Gereaux, Michelle Good, Robyn Harding, Stella Leventoyannis Harvey, Zak Jones, Loghan Paylor, and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, as well as newcomers including Heather Hendrie, Brad Sills and Lasänma.
2026 Festival Highlights
In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Whistler Writers Festival, this year’s theme is Celebrating Stories for 25 Years! Explore event highlights across the four-day festival below.
Thursday, November 5
Three Generations
Time: 5 – 6:15 PM
Location: Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre
Details: Generations of families reveal ties that bind, family dynamics that are passed down, and hidden secrets that, over time, have astonishing impacts. Michelle Good is the award-winning and bestselling author of Five Little Indians. Her latest novel, Eliza Sunshine, delivers a powerful family saga following three generations of Cree women and the storytelling tradition that connects them to each other. In Fancy Gap, the powerful, unforgettable debut by Zak Jones, three estranged generations in Appalachia grapple with loss, poverty, and their individual demons, until an explosive climax brings them together in apocalyptic deliverance.
Celebrating Sea to Sky Storytellers
Time: 7:30 – 9 PM
Location: Whistler Public Library: Fireplace Lounge
Details: Come along and celebrate the deeply personal, courageous and gripping new publications by emerging and legendary local authors, Heather Hendrie (Where the Eff is My Red Tent?: On Periods, PMDD and Hormone Hell), Bronwyn Preece (hiking beyond: poems from the trail) and Brad Sills (Echoes on the Wind: A Reflection on Fifty Years of Search & Rescue in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains).
Friday, November 6
Cultural & Spiritual Care: Healing through Stories
Time: 5:30 – 6:45 PM
Location: Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre
Details: In the spirit of reconciliation, join four guest artists sharing their truths and how healing can happen, through traditional ceremonies, stories and reconnecting with culture, language and the land. Join author, moderator and Gitxaała Nation member Kim Spencer (Springtime in Kitkatla, Here for a Good Time) in conversation with Josh Anderson of the Lil’wat Nation, and co-author of Útszan ti Smáwal̓a (Healing the Spirit): An Introduction to Ceremony, Traditional Spirituality and Healing; poet Lasänmą, author of the debut poetry collection Spruce to Cedar; and Squamish Nation cultural storyteller Tsawaysia Spukwus (Dominique Nahanee).
Characters on the Edge: Analyzing Psychological Thrillers
Time: 8 – 10 PM
Location: Fairmont Chateau Whistler
Details: Join thriller author and moderator Amber Cowie as she leads a conversation with Robyn Harding and A.D. Sui, two brilliant and fascinating writers capable of creating characters with minds as complex as the gripping situations in which they find themselves. Robyn Harding’s latest novel is Strangers in the Villa, a psychological thriller about a couple rocked by infidelity who moves to a villa in Spain’s Costa Brava to rebuild their relationship, only to welcome a pair of visitors who have no intention of leaving. A.D. Sui's Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends is a sapphic cli-fi thriller and love letter to hope in the bleakest of times, combining the multiverse-bending drama of This Is How You Lose the Time War with the cat-and-mouse chase of Killing Eve.
Saturday, November 7
Glorious, Disrupting Dystopia
Time: 1:45 – 3 PM
Location: Fairmont Chateau Whistler
Details: Is it possible for offline work and purpose to survive in an AI world? Author and moderator Alli Vail explores these questions and more with multi-awarding winning authors, Anakana Schofield (The Library of Brothel) and Glenn Dixon (The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances). Riotous, dramatic, passionate and funny, Library of Brothel is a cri de coeur for human connection and the right to meaningful work. In The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances, where even the smallest of appliances are sentient, a young Roomba vacuum sets out to save the humans of her house from a rising technological power in this compelling, original novel.
The Trek to Know Thyself: A Conversation with Writers of Non-Fiction
Time: 3:15 – 4:30 PM
Location: Fairmont Chateau Whistler
Details: Author and moderator Leslie Anthony discusses true stories of the impact of alienation and isolation from family due to distance, and a story of healing and transformation in midlife. Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho (The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street) shares her intimate geopolitical memoir about a family separated by distance and borders, split between Taiwan and Canada in the wake of shifting global powers. From six-time Olympic medalist, author and humanitarian Clara Hughes, comes Learning to Breathe, a vulnerable, funny, wise and fascinating memoir about one human’s healing journey, the terrors and joys of midlife change, and the potential for new beginnings at any stage.
Sunday, November 8
Being Forest: A Salish Stroll
Time: 9 – 10:30 AM
Location: Meeting Point is at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler Lobby
Details: What better way to experience poetry and cultural storytelling than outside in nature? Moderator Tatiana Lee will guide attendees along the Salish Stroll Forest Walk and Fitzsimmons Creek to pause for readings by debut author Avis Blackbird (Lightning in Our Roots) and the City of Vancouver’s current Poet Laureate, Elee Kraljii Gardiner (sometimes, forest). This year we will be joined by the inaugural 2026 Winner of the Whistler Independent Book Award for Poetry.
Sunday BookTalk and Breakfast
Time: Doors Open 10:45 AM | Breakfast 11 AM | Event 11:45 AM – 1 PM
Location: Fairmont Chateau Whistler
Details: Moderator Jeanette Bruce engages three award-winning authors in important conversations about dismantling systems, bearing witness, and exploring how a sophisticated Indigenous tradition can function as sequential narrative art. Engaging Griffin Poetry prize winner Eve Joseph’s latest book, Dismantling, Yasuko Thanh (with author Hassan Kanafani) editor and co-author of Pizza Before We Die: An Eyewitness Account in Gaza and the originator of the Haida manga-verse, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, the creator of The Lost Haida Manga: A Compendium.