Provocative Perspectives

The 22nd annual festival runs from October 9 to 15, 2017. Wordfest™ connects Calgarians with life-changing ideas from some of today's most compelling authors. Our programming is accessible, engaging and fun. Events feature genres fiction, non-fiction, poetry and spoken word performances, current event panels, workshops, film & art installations, youth and multilingual programming, in-school performances and featured events with some of the most talked-about writers of the season.

Wordfest 2017

Trust us: you won’t want to miss out on this exploration of the borders of identity. Ghada Alatrash’s short stories offer a re-representation of a rich Syrian culture that is seldom seen fully in Western media. A Syrian refugee in Toronto asks a bed-ridden author to pretend to be the author of her memoir in Martha Baillie’s If Clara. Nicole Lundrigan uses the delicious device of an unreliable narrator to chilling effect in The Substitute, in which a teacher may or may not have murdered one of his students. And, finally, Alison Pick re-imagines the ultimate divided state of present-day Israel and Palestine as the backdrop for a love story that shows how idealism quickly tumbles into pragmatism, and how the utopian dream is punctured by messy human entanglements. This event is hosted by Marcello Di Cintio.
<H3 CLASS="MsoNormal">Ghada Alatrash</H3>
Syrian-Canadian author and translator Ghada Alatrash is a doctoral student and research assistant at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. She has been profiled in several media including CBC, PBS, BBC, Aljazeera, and Gulf News. She has been invited to present her work, accompanied by music and poetry, in Canada and abroad. One of her goals is to amplify the voices of the marginalized through her writings and translations. She lives in Calgary.
<H3 CLASS="MsoNormal">Martha Baillie</H3>
Martha Baillie has written numerous books, including The Incident Report, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her most recent novel, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel, received wide acclaim and was an O Magazine editors’ pick. Other than writing, canoeing and hiking are two of her principal passions. She lives in Toronto with her daughter and husband.
<H3 CLASS="MsoNormal">Nicole Lundrigan</H3>
Nicole Lundrigan is the author of five critically acclaimed novels, including Glass Boys and The Widow Tree. Her work has appeared on best of the year selections of The Globe and Mail and NOW Magazine and she has been longlisted for the ReLit Award. Born in Ottawa and raised in Newfoundland, Lundrigan now lives in Toronto.
<H3 CLASS="MsoNormal">Alison Pick</H3>
Alison Pick was the 2002 Bronwen Wallace Award winner for the most promising young writer in Canada. She has published three acclaimed volumes of poetry and three highly acclaimed novels, including the bestselling Far to Go, which was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Canadian Jewish Award for Fiction.

Glenbow Museum Theatre

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Provocative Perspectives

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Provocative Perspectives

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