Wordfest presents Jann Arden

Jann Arden — bestselling author, recording artist and late-blooming TV star — is back with a funny, heartfelt and fierce memoir on becoming a woman of a certain age. The power, gravity and freedom she's found at 57 are superpowers she believes all of us can unleash. Please join her to celebrate the exclusive world book launch of If I Knew Then. 

The hour-long conversation will start at 7:00 PM MT (9 PM ET/6 PM PT) and will be hosted by Shelley Youngblut, Wordfest’s CEO and Creative Ringleader. (The pre-show will start 10 minutes before showtime.)

This live-stream event is $39 and includes a signed copy of If I Knew Then (managed by our bookselling partner Indigo), which includes shipping. (Books will be shipped starting on Nov.5). Your ticket package also includes Wordfest's Digital Doggie Bag sent to your email right after the event, sharing all the links, goodies and references from our conversation with Jann. Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for making this exceptional experience possible.

 If I Knew Then: Finding Wisdom in Failure and Power in Aging 

Digging deep into her strengths, her failures and her losses, Jann Arden brings us an inspiring account of how she has surprised herself, in her fifties, by at last becoming completely her own person. Like many women, it took Jann a long time to realize that trying to be pleasing and likeable and beautiful in the eyes of others was a loser's game. Letting it rip, and damning the consequences, is not only liberating, it's a hell of a lot of fun: “Being the age I am — that so many women are — is just the best time of my life.”

Jann weaves her own story together with tales of her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, and the father she came close to hating, to show her younger self — and all of us — that fear and avoidance is no way to live. “What I'm thinking about now aren't all the ways I can try to hang on to my youth or all the seconds ticking by in some kind of morbid countdown to death,” she writes, “but rather how I keep becoming someone I always hoped I could be. If I'm lucky one day a very old face will look back at me from the mirror, a face I once shied away from. I will love that old woman ferociously, because she has finally figured out how to live a life of purpose — not in spite of but because of all her mistakes and failures.”

About Jann Arden

Jann Arden is a singer, songwriter, broadcaster, actor, author and social media star. The celebrated multi-platinum, award-winning artist catapulted onto the music scene in 1993 with her debut album, Time for Mercy, featuring the hit single “I Would Die for You.” A year later she had her international break-out hit, “Insensitive.” She has written four books, the most recent being the Canadian bestseller Feeding My Mother: Comfort and Laughter in the Kitchen as My Mom Lives with Memory Loss. A multiple Juno Award-winner, Jann continues to record and tour; in 2020 she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. She is also the star of her own hit TV sitcom, Jann (the second season is currently airing Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CTV, CTV.ca and the CTV app) and the host of the weekly Jann Arden Podcast. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @jannarden.