Become Part of the Vital Wordfest Community

Celebrating its 30th Anniversary in 2025, Wordfest™ produces lively, accessible shows year-round, in addition to presenting the Imaginairium Festival every October. Our goal is to help you think bigger, dig deeper, and build meaningful connections with the world’s best authors and books. Whether you love fiction or non-fiction, memoir or mysteries, food culture or pop culture, politics or poetry, major prize winners or breakout stars, a Wordfest show is the exclamation between the book being written and the book being read.

Sign up for our newsletter here so you’ll never miss out on the wide range of local, national, and international writers that we are able to showcase in Calgary. For questions or assistance booking tickets, please email us at boxoffice@wordfest.com

November

SOLD OUT Wordfest Presents Jody Wilson-Raybould & Roshan Danesh
Wordfest Presents Jody Wilson-Raybould

Nov 27 @ 7 PM MT $15 - $25

Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor
1221 2 St SW
SOLD OUT
Wordfest is honorued to welcome back lawyer, politician, and best-selling author Jody Wilson-Raybould with her new book, Reconciling History: A Story of Canada. We're thrilled to announce that she'll be joined onstage with her co-author—lawyer and educator Roshan Danesh, who has been on the frontlines of advancing Indigenous rights and reconciliation in Canada. Reconciling History is a continuation of the vital conversation fuelled by the history shared in True Reconciliation, which sparked one of Wordfest’s most meaningful in-person experiences in 2022. The conversation, hosted by Wordfest's Shelley Youngblut, includes an audience Q&A and book signing. READ MORE
Wordfest Presents Wordfestivus
Book Lover’s Dream Market

Nov 28 @ 5:30 PM MT FREE

Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor
1221 2 St SW
Join us for a Book Lover's Dream Market. We’ve assembled all your favourite indie booksellers—Cookbook Co. Books, Owl’s Nest Books, Shelf Life Books & Slow Burn Books—who have curated selections of their fave books from 2024 to solve all your holiday gift needs. Because it’s the night before Black Friday, you can expect some sweet deals. Our friends at the Calgary Public Library Foundation will also be there with special gifts ideas for all ages that go toward supporting Calgary’s exceptional library system. It will also be your first chance to scoop up a Wordfest 2025 season pass or Imaginairium festival pass—as well as one of the limited number of All-Access passes that give you, well, everything, including reserved seating, book with tickets events, and food and spirited drink experiences, in addition to personalized concierge service. We’ll also have limited-edition totes and Lisa Brawn pins, with proceeds going toward Wordfest’s vital Youth Progam, supporting teen literacy. There will be hot chocolate, wine, beer, bubbly—and music. Come celebrate this vibrant, book-loving community we have created together. This event is FREE. Please RSVP so that we'll know how much cider to mull. READ MORE

January

One Yellow Rabbit & Wordfest Co-Present The First Bad Man
One Yellow Rabbit & Wordfest Co-Present The First Bad Man

Jan 30 @ 7:30 PM MT $55

Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor
1221 2 St SW
Add To Cart
Not quite your mother's book club, this immersive theatre experience offers far more than just a literary discussion. Audience members will join a live performance featuring Dublin’s Pan Pan Theatre, based on a reading of The First Bad Man, a novel by Miranda July. Grab a seat and settle in as Kitty Blennerhasset, John Benno, Rose McVittie, and Freya Golden explore the first book featured in their book club, returning week after week, along with the characters of Miranda July’s debut novel. This production of The First Bad Man is a humourous, thoughtful, and occasionally unsettling look at how we engage with others, drawing on the book's themes of loneliness and isolation. Ticket price includes an advance copy of The First Bad Man. READ MORE

About Us

Wordfest™ beams out from Calgary, Canada in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, Treaty 7 territory. We are an entrepreneurial arts non-profit founded in 1996 as one of Canada’s leading literary festivals. Our small team’s mission (which is to connect the world’s best audiences with the world’s best authors) has evolved to include producing lively, accessible shows year-round, in addition to the fall Imaginairium Festival. Our unique (and free) Wordfest Youth program focuses fuelling literacy in Grades 5 to 12, providing interactive experiences and class sets of books to thousands of students every year. We also produce Imagine On Air Audio, as well as online programming.