It’s been a decade since Ian Williams was the Canadian Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program, but our love for him remains unabated. After memorable Imagine on Air online shows during the pandemic (paired with Margaret Atwood in 2020 and Omar El Akkad in 2021), he’s finally returning to Calgary with his new novel, You’ve Changed, as part of our ongoing 30th Anniversary celebration. The 7PM conversation includes an audience Q&A and book signing. Pre-order your copy through Owl’s Nest Books here.
This special show will be will be preceded at 6PM with an exclusive preview of Wordfest’s 2025 Imaginairium (Oct. 14-19), hosted by Wordfest’s CEO & Creative Ringleader Shelley Youngblut. This is your exclusive chance to ask questions, buy festival books, and get the inside scoop on the 30+ shows and stellar lineup coming to this year’s festival so you can plan your festival week.
Shelley Youngblut (Preview)
Deborah Willis (Show)
Bonus: Festival Preview
Hosted Conversation
Audience Q&A
Pop-Up Bookstore
Book Signing
Libations Bar
Preview: 45 minutes
Intermission: 15 minutes
Show: 75 minutes
Penguin Random House Canada
Ian Williams is the author of seven acclaimed books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He delivered the 2024 CBC Massey Lectures, What I Mean to Say, on rehabilitating conversations. His previous book, Disorientation, was selected as a best book of the year by the Boston Globe. Williams’s debut novel, Reproduction, won the Giller Prize. His poetry collection, Word Problems, won the Raymond Souster Award, and his previous collection, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. Williams’s short story collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. He is a trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize and a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing program at University of Toronto.
The eagerly awaited follow-up novel from the Giller prize-winning author of Reproduction, You’ve Changed is a daring and clever dissection of a crumbling marriage between two people who are morphing in ways that confound each other.
Middle-aged and about to be dumped from his construction job, Beckett is not feeling his best—especially since his wife, Princess, is already pressuring him to improve himself. She’s a fitness instructor who spends a lot of time and energy finetuning every inch of her body. Still, they both think their marriage is basically fine, until a couple of friends show up for a visit, their mutual affection and sexual chemistry loudly on display. In one weekend, they upset the tenuous balance between Beckett and Princess, throwing them into parallel midlife crises.
Princess thinks the problem is physical, and attempts to revive Beckett’s interest with relentless surgical alterations and bodily enhancements that have the opposite effect on her husband. Beckett tries to woo Princess back to him by relaunching his contracting business, laying his manly accomplishments at her feet. Then, while Princess is away pursuing even more drastic beauty measures, Beckett meets Gluten, an energetic and erratic man devoted to living in the moment, whom Beckett feels drawn to in ways that surprise him. Beckett is changing, Princess is changing: what will happen to their already stressed marriage?
Sharp, inventive and absurdly funny, You’ve Changed is a wild ride exploring identity, insecurity, intimacy and desire, and who individuals become when they unite, and how they change despite promising not to.
Shelley Youngblut (Preview)
Deborah Willis (Show)
Bonus: Festival Preview
Hosted Conversation
Audience Q&A
Pop-Up Bookstore
Book Signing
Libations Bar
Preview: 45 minutes
Intermission: 15 minutes
Show: 75 minutes
Penguin Random House Canada
Deborah Willis’ novel, Girlfriend on Mars, was longlisted for the 2023 Giller Prize, the 2024 Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and The Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. Her short story collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories, was also longlisted for the Giller Prize. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named a Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2009 and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Willis’ work has also appeared in The Walrus, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Lucky Peach, and Zoetrope. She has worked as a bookseller at Munro’s Books in Victoria, as a technical writer, and as a writer-in-residence at Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver, MacEwan University, and the University of Calgary. Willis is an editor at Freehand Books and lives in Calgary with her partner, Kris Demeanor, and daughter.
Shelley Youngblut is the CEO & Creative Ringleader of Wordfest. She was the recipient of the 2020 Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts and the 2018 Rozsa Award for Arts Leadership. She also won the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Western Magazine Awards. Youngblut was the founding editor of Calgary’s award-winning Swerve magazine and has created magazines for ESPN, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Nickelodeon, Western Living, and The Globe and Mail. A former pop-culture correspondent for ABC World News Now and Canada AM, she was also a frequent contributor to CBC Calgary’s The Eyeopener, The Homestretch, and Daybreak Alberta.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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