Reasons to become a subscriber:

To make sure we can keep value in this program for everyone who subscribes, we are selling a maximum of 200 subscriptions, and we will close subscription sales whenever we sell out, or on May 15, 2026.

PLEASE NOTE:

Buying a subscription won’t automatically guarantee that you will be able to buy all the tickets and passes you want. To ensure access to the more popular events and passes, we will be capping sales at 2 passes and 4 tickets per event per subscriber during the presale period. We will also be reserving inventory for all events and passes to release on Monday, June 1, 2026, when sales open to the general public. This means subscriber inventory may sell out in some cases, and we urge you to order early to avoid disappointment. Subscribers will be able to purchase additional passes and tickets with their 10% discount as soon as general sales open on June 1st.

Questions? Please email in**@*************al.ca. You can purchase a subscription by using the link below, or by phoning the office at 604-885-9631 during business hours. Thank you for your support!

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Reasons to become a subscriber:

PLEASE NOTE:

Buying a subscription won’t automatically guarantee that you will be able to buy all the tickets and passes you want. To ensure access to the more popular events and passes, we will be capping sales at 2 passes and 4 tickets per event per subscriber during the presale period. We will also be reserving inventory for all events and passes to release on Monday, June 2, 2025, when sales open to the general public. This means subscriber inventory may sell out in some cases, and we urge you to order early to avoid disappointment. Subscribers will be able to purchase additional passes and tickets with their 10% discount as soon as general sales open on June 2.

Questions? Please email in**@*************al.ca. You can purchase a subscription by using the link below, or by phoning the office at 604-885-9631 during business hours. Thank you for your support!

The post Subscribe to the 2025 Festival of the Written Arts appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

Instead, bestselling novelist Iona Whishaw will be featured in a solo event on Friday, August 16 at 4:00 pm.

Iona Whishaw is a former educator and social worker whose mother and grandfather were both spies during their respective wars. She is the award-winning author of the Lane Winslow Mystery series, which has been called “highly entertaining” by Publishers Weekly, and described as “relentlessly exciting from start to finish” by Kirkus Reviews. Her eleventh novel in the series, Lightning Strikes the Silence (Touchwood Editions), was named by CBC Books as a Top 20 Bestselling Canadian Book of 2024 so far, and recently hit #1 on the BC Bestseller list. Iona lives in Vancouver, BC, with her husband.

We thank Iona Whishaw for stepping in on short notice and hope you will join us in sending good thoughts to Kyo Maclear. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.

If you have purchased tickets to see Kyo Maclear, you may use them to attend the event with Iona Whishaw and a new ticket is not needed. Please call or email the Festival office if you would like to request a refund or exchange your ticket(s) for another event (depending on availability).

The Festival office is located at the Rockwood Centre, 5511 Shorncliffe Avenue, Sechelt. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 4:30 pm.
Phone: 604-885-9631 or 1-800-565-9631 (toll-free)
Email: summerintern(at)writersfestival.ca

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Subscribers to the 2024 Festival of the Written Arts will have access to ticket sales starting Monday, May 27 at 9:00 am, as well as a 10% discount on all tickets and festival passes. *

Subscribers and the general public will be able to order tickets online (links will be available on our website) and by phone at 604-885-9631 and toll-free at 1-800-565-9631, starting on the dates above. As of June 4, you will also be able to purchase tickets by visiting our festival office at 5511 Shorncliffe Avenue in Sechelt, BC.

To purchase a subscription to the 2024 festival, please visit the link below.

* For early access to 2024 ticket sales, you must order your subscription by May 20, 2024. The 10% discount will be available to subscribers until ticket sales for each event have closed, but discounts will not be given retroactively.

The post 2024 Festival Ticket information appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

We would really appreciate as many of you as possible using the online purchasing option on the first day of sales and leaving telephone sales for those who can’t purchase online. We will have only two telephone lines open this year.

Please be advised, before you purchase your tickets, that masks at the Festival may be required under certain circumstances.

Online Sales

This is the link for online ticket sales: https://www.showpass.com/o/sunshine-coast-festival-of-the-written-arts/. The events are now posted on Showpass so you can visit and scroll through the events and familiarize yourself with the site.

If you don’t already have an account with Showpass, consider enrolling before Monday at 9 a.m. and keep your password handy. If you already have an account (we used Showpass last year), make sure you can still sign in. Don’t wait until Monday to realize you can’t remember your password.

You can download and print the Festival Planner to help you organize your order.

You can print your tickets at home OR drop a line to Grace at su**********@*************al.ca and ask her to print your tickets for you. All you need to provide is the name of the person who purchased the tickets. This is simply a paper-saving offer. Each Showpass ticket consumes one 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. Our tickets consume much less. Please note: We do not have the capacity to scan electronic devices. We will accept paper tickets only.

Tickets printed at the office will be available after July 4.

Telephone Sales

We have reserved a limited ticket inventory for telephone sales. We will have only two lines open and two people receiving orders. Please have your order planned and ready when you call in so that we can take care of you as quickly as possible and move on to the next caller. Again, have your credit card handy. We predict the busiest time will be Monday morning but we will be here all day taking calls and processing orders. If you don’t get through, please try again in a few minutes or leave a voicemail. We will call you back as soon as we can! Telephone numbers are 604-885-9631 or 1-800-565-9631.

In-Person Sales

We add in-person sales on Tuesday, June 21. Our office hours are Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The office is located at 5511 Shorncliffe Avenue in Sechelt, at the lower entrance to the Rockwood Centre.

Questions?

We’re here to help and will happily answer your questions before or after Monday. We won’t have time to chat then!

We look forward to chatting with you over the days and weeks to come and to seeing you at the Rockwood Centre in ch’atlich (Sechelt) August 11 to 14!

The post Tickets on sale on Monday, June 20, 2022 at 9 a.m. (Pacific) appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

While the ongoing pandemic hasn’t stopped us from planning a wonderful 40^th anniversary Festival (August 11-14), it has caused us to rethink how we do things and make some significant changes. Some of you are long-time attendees and some of you are new to the Festival. I hope the explanations offered below provide the rationale for our decisions.

But first things first: the schedule and author bios can be found here.

Brochure Distribution

• This year: We are reducing the number of brochures we print and eliminating direct mass mailing. The brochures will be available on the Sunshine Coast at locations from Gibsons to Pender Harbour. Those locations will be posted on our website and in advertisements in the Coast Reporter. The brochure content (author bios, general information, ticket purchasing options) will be posted on our website along with a downloadable/printable pdf of the schedule and ticket prices. Brochures will be distributed in May and the website will be updated with the brochure content.
• We will be happy to mail you a brochure if you request it. Send an email to ja**@*************al.ca or call/leave a message at 604-885-9631. Please provide your current mailing address (even if you think we have it).
• Why: Brochure printing/postage is a big expense and generates a lot of paper waste. The brochure mailing is a huge undertaking that requires 8-10 volunteers working together to stamp, label and stuff envelopes. This is not the time to gather together in a small space.

Ticket Sales: On Sale Date

• This year: We will delay putting tickets on sale until June 20, 2022.
• Why: We need to see where this virus is going. Will we be allowed to have 400 people in the Pavilion in August and will we be comfortable doing so? We do not want to find ourselves in the position of having to reduce capacity after tickets go on sale. The safety and comfort of the authors, audience, volunteer and production team remain our priority.

Ticket Sales: First day of sales

• This year: We are asking as many of you as possible to purchase your tickets and passes through Showpass. While many of us have grown accustomed to making online purchases throughout the course of the pandemic, we recognize that some won’t have access to a computer and the online system. We will continue to take orders by phone when tickets go on sale but there will be only two telephone lines open and two people answering the calls. In-person sales will start on the day after tickets go on sale.
• Why: For many years, we have installed a temporary 8-line system that is very expensive and has never been reliable. Showpass is a stable online platform. Again, we are also trying to avoid having 10 people gather in our small office talking orders by telephone.

What’s next? We will post here and send a digital newsletter when the brochure has been distributed to pick-up locations on the Sunshine Coast and let you know where you can find it. We’ll also be in touch well in advance of June 20 to brief you on the process of ordering tickets through Showpass.

Please help us spread the word to Festival friends or friends who might be interested in joining us this year and ask them to sign up for our digital newsletter. This is the most efficient way to share news and updates.  We send newsletters infrequently and only when we have information to share.

Questions? You can reach us at the office Monday-Friday at 604-885-9631 or send an email to ja**@*************al.ca.

The post Brochure distribution and ticket update (updated May 10) appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

Sunday, July 7 at 2 p.m. – Festival Pavilion, Sechelt

Online ticket sales will be discontinued on www.share-there.c0m at 5 p.m. on Saturday, July 6. Tickets will be available for purchase on Sunday, July 7 at 1 p.m. at the Festival office, 5511 Shorncliffe Avenue, Sechelt. 

If you purchased tickets through the Festival office (either in person or by telephone) and have not picked up your tickets yet, you can pick them up at the Festival office anytime after 1 p.m. on Sunday, July 7.

If you purchased tickets via Share-There.com and have printed your ticket at home, please present it to the ticket-takers at either the upper or lower entrance to the Pavilion.

If you purchased tickets via Share-There.com and have not printed your ticket, please proceed to the upper entrance of the Pavilion. There will be a table with two volunteers who will have the list of ticket purchasers. This list is organized alphabetically by the  FIRST name of the ticket purchaser.

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To keep the process moving along when ordering by phone, please have your order ready and your credit card and reading glasses in hand.

There is no advantage to using either telephone number (604-885-9631 or 1-800-565-9631). We will have eight telephone lines open. That means we can talk to eight callers at a time. This temporary telephone system has the capacity to keep an additional 16 callers in a waiting queue for up to 20 minutes. That’s 24 callers accounted for. We know that hundreds of attempts are being made simultaneously. The very frustrating piece is that your call will be dropped when you reach that 20 minute mark. I apologize in advance if this happens to you. This is the capacity of the system we have to work with. You may also receive an automated message; i.e. “this number is no longer in service”. This is a system glitch and a result of the volume of calls in the first couple of hours of ticket sales.There will be bumps in the first hour but the eight operators are receiving calls and processing orders constantly.

Meanwhile you have the option of purchasing online at www.share-there.com/writersfestival. If you have any questions or issues while placing your ticket order with Share-there, Sean will be standing by to support you at 604-741-8184.

Online sales are subject to processing fees. All prices include GST.

Please call the office after June 20 if you would like your tickets mailed to you. We encourage you to let us hold onto your tickets for you. Postage is expensive and having tickets held here eliminates the possibility of them being lost or forgotten. We can’t take responsibility for your tickets once they leave our office. We will hold your tickets until you come for your first event at the Festival. You will receive a confirmation from share-there when you order online but you still need a ticket printed by the Festival of the Written Arts to attend an event. Why? Our tickets consume less paper and our front of house volunteers will not be equipped to scan digital images on phones and tablets.

All tickets will be ready for pick-up on Wednesday, June 20.

PLEASE NOTE: All sales are final. This has always been our policy but we have, in past years, accepted the return of tickets for sold out events with waiting lists. This has become an unwieldy process that we are discontinuing.

If you are referring to a paper copy of the brochure, please note that there is an error in the body of the brochure. We transposed Event #12 and Event #17. The planner on the back panel of the brochure is correct.

Event #12 Ausma Zehanat Khan
Saturday, August 18 at 2:30 p.m.

Event #17 Kim Fu
Sunday, August 19 at 10:30 a.m.

Please call back during the summer and before the Festival if you have special seating needs or will require assistance from one of our Accessibility Volunteers. We won’t have time to help you on the first day of sales and we don’t want your request to get lost.

Please call the office or send an email to in**@*************al.ca if you have questions or concerns. We look forward to chatting with you in the weeks to come as we prepare for our annual celebration of Canadian writers and their readers.

The post Everything you need to know about ticket sales! appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

The full schedule of events is here.

To keep the process moving along, please have your order ready and your credit card and reading glasses in hand.

There is no advantage to using either telephone number (604-885-9631 or 1-800-565-9631). We will have eight telephone lines open. That means we can talk to eight callers at a time. This temporary telephone system has the capacity to keep an additional 16 callers in a waiting queue for up to 20 minutes. That’s 24 callers accounted for. We know that hundreds of attempts are being made simultaneously. The very frustrating piece is that your call will be dropped if you’ve been on hold for 20 minutes. I apologize in advance if this happens to you. This is the capacity of the system we have to work with. It is not uncommon to receive automated messages that make no sense at all; i.e. “this number is no longer in service.” Again, this is a result of the volume of calls in the first two hours of ticket sales.

There will be bumps in the first hour but the eight operators are receiving calls and processing orders constantly. Offering online sales last year certainly made a difference and relieved a lot of the pressure. We had great reports from patrons about the online process offered by www.share-there.com.

Online sales are subject to processing fees of 9.6% (5% to share-there.com who have built a secure site for ticket sales and 4.6% to PayPal). All prices include GST.

Please call the office after June 21 if you would like your tickets mailed to you. We encourage you to let us hold onto your tickets for you. Postage is expensive and having tickets held here eliminates the possibility of them being lost or forgotten. We will hold your tickets until you come for your first event at the Festival. You will receive a confirmation from share-there when you order online but you still need a ticket printed by the Festival of the Written Arts to attend an event. Why? Our tickets consume less paper and we are not ready to scan digital images on phones and tablets.

All tickets will be ready for pick-up on Wednesday, June 21. 

We would really like to hear from you if you have special seating needs. Please call back in June or July to discuss that. We won’t have time to help you on the first day of sales and we don’t want your request to get lost.

Please call or send me an email if you have questions or concerns. We look forward to chatting with you in the weeks to come as we prepare to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of this wonderful gathering of writers and readers!

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