SOLD OUT! Click here to join the waitlist. (Thank you, Wordfesters, for your remarkable support. If you missed out on tickets, get yourself, your friends, family, and neighbours to sign up for our e-blast to ensure you never miss out next time!)

We’re thrilled that Alan Doyle is returning to Wordfest with perhaps his most personal book yet, The Smiling Land: All Around the Circle in My Newfoundland and Labrador. The conversation, hosted by the ebullient Nita Prose (the bestselling author of The Maid, who was Doyle’s first book editor in a previous life), includes an audience Q&A and book signing. BONUS: Your ticket includes a pre-signed copy of The Smiling Land.

Our friends at Owl’s Nest books will also be on site if you’d like to purchase additional copies of The Smiling Land or titles from Doyle’s best-selling backlist. And you get 10% off your book purchase if you pre-order a bundle of two or more books here.

In We Breed Lions, TSN Senior Correspondent Rick Westhead delivers a hard-hitting and powerful look at hockey’s moment of reckoning in Canada, exploring how a game beloved nationwide has been rocked in recent years by court cases involving sexual assault and startling incidents of hazing and abuse throughout junior hockey.

This timely conversation, hosted by respected Calgary sports journalist Vicki Hall, includes an audience Q&A and book signing, fuelled by Shelf Life Books.

You can pre-order We Breed Lions here from Shelf Life Books, or purchase your copy at the show.

“Our ancestors understood how to live in balance with the natural world. Indigenous foods are the original foods of this continent. It’s important we recognize that and start celebrating those foods,” says Sean Sherman, a James Beard Award-winner and one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2023.

Wordfest is honoured to present Sherman in conversation about his new book Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. The evening also includes an audience Q&A and book signing fuelled by Cookbook Co. Cooks. Pre-order your copy here or purchase at the show.

In the year of “Elbows Up,” we can’t think of a more entertaining celebrity to guide us through our Canadian-ness than award-winning comedian and actor Mark Critch.

Critch’s new book, Sorry, Not Sorry: An Unapologetic Look at What Makes Canada Worth Fighting For explores Canada’s national identity with sharp wit, a perceptive eye, and refreshing ability to set things in historical context. Critch’s style of humour is the perfect antidote for these turbulent and confusing times. We can’t wait to welcome him to Calgary for this lively conversation hosted by Ali Bryan, followed by a book signing fuelled by Owl’s Nest Books, who will be onsite with copies of the new book, along with Critch’s previous bestsellers.

Want to be first in the signing line? Pre-order your copy of Sorry, Not Sorry here and it will be waiting for you to just pick up before the show starts.