The Lunch Boxes will be available, for pre-order only, on Friday Aug. 14, Saturday, Aug. 15, and Sunday, Aug. 16. between 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. Lunch boxes can be picked up at the lunch table near the Book Tent. The pre-order period will open at the end of June and last until 48-hours before each day. 

There will be five Lunch options, priced at $30.00 each (including tax and delivery). 

• Crispy Chicken Club Wrap with tortellini pasta salad and chocolate chip cookie 
• Gluten-free Chicken Club Wrap with Greek quinoa salad and peanut butter granola bar (GF) 
• Vegetarian Falafel Wrap with tortellini pasta salad and chocolate chip cookie (vegetarian) 
• Vegan Falafel Wrap with Greek quinoa salad and peanut butter granola bar (GF, vegan) 
• Roast Beef & Cheddar Baguette with tortellini pasta salad and chocolate chip cookie

If sandwiches aren’t your style, there will also be delicious charcuterie boxes offered for $24.00 (including tax and delivery) that contain imported cheeses, salami, prosciutto, olives, and crackers. The charcuterie box is gluten-free.

Check back here when the pre-order begins in late June!

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Register for a one-on-one meeting with Janine Young, a literary writer and the managing editor of Nightwood Editions. This 20-minute session provides the opportunity to get feedback from a publishing professional and learn about the editing process.

Janine Alyson Young is a literary writer from the West Coast of BC. Her short story collection Hideout Hotel was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award, and she has been toiling over her first novel ever since. She is also the managing editor at Nightwood Editions, an indie publisher which proudly works with emerging and award-winning authors. She lives on the unceded traditional land of the Skwxwú7mesh People in Gibsons, BC. 

Please note that the selected registrants will have to submit a writing sample by July 30th. More information will be provided.

Festival and day passes do not include admission to Special Event A. To reserve a ticket for the Blue Pencil Sessions, fill out this order form and the Festival Office will contact you (while supplies last).

Location: Rockwood Lodge Art Space
Date: Sessions on Friday, August 14, Saturday, August 15 and Sunday, August 16
Cost: $40.00

Event B – Dialogue Workshop with Sam Wiebe

Join crime writer Sam Wiebe for a workshop on dialogue. He’ll discuss the difference between dialogue and real-life speech; how dialogue relates to character, pacing, voice, and plot; and why characters say one thing and mean another (even if they don’t know it).

Sam Wiebe is the author of the bestselling Ocean Drive as well as the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada, including Sunset and Jericho and The Last Exile. Guns Across the River is the latest in the series. His work has won the Crime Writers of Canada award, the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus and City of Vancouver book prizes. The Last Exile is a finalist for the 2026 BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Wiebe lives in New Westminster, BC.

Festival and day passes do not include admission to Special Event B. To reserve a ticket for the dialogue workshop, order at www.writersfestival.ca, visit the festival office in person or call 604-885-9631 (while supplies last).

Location: Rockwood Lodge Art Space
Date: Friday, August 14, 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Cost: $25.00

Event C – Writing Memoir with Donna Morrissey

SOLD OUT! Contact the Festival Office to be added to the waitlist

Just what the heck qualifies as memoir and how do you tell your story truthfully when everyone in it is still alive? In this workshop you’ll learn to distinguish between three types of memoir (book length, personal essay and narrative essay), decide which one works best for your story, and identify the main themes or ‘heart’ of your work.

Donna Morrissey is the author of the nationally bestselling memoir Pluck, which was a finalist for the Atlantic Book Awards’ Non-Fiction Award, and of seven acclaimed and bestselling novels, including the national bestseller Rage the Night. She won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Fiction for The Fortunate Brother; Sylvanus Now was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; and The Deception of Livvy Higgs was a One Read pick for Nova Scotia in 2017. Her fiction has also won awards in the US and the UK, and has been translated into several languages. Born and raised in Newfoundland, she lives in Halifax.

Festival and day passes do not include admission to Special Event C. To reserve a ticket for the memoir workshop, order at www.writersfestival.ca, visit the festival office in person or call 604-885-9631 (while supplies last).

Location: Rockwood Lodge Art Space
Date: Saturday, August 15, 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Cost: $25.00

Event D – Festival of the Written Arts Coffee Hour

Enjoy complimentary coffee and tea and live music while you share stories, talk books and mingle with other festival goers. No registration required!

Location: Beside the Book Tent
Date: Sunday, August 16, 12:30 – 1:30 pm
Cost: Free

The post Special Events at the 2026 Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

Al and Eurithe Purdy

The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts is pleased to announce the Al and Eurithe Purdy BC Award for Excellence, an annual prize recognizing an outstanding book of fiction or non-fiction written by a BC author and published by a BC-based publisher.

The prize is made possible through the generous support of Eurithe Purdy in memory of her late husband, the great Canadian writer Al Purdy, and was created to recognize his literary legacy and his close ties to British Columbia. “It is an honour to be able to endow this new prize for BC writers,” said Eurithe Purdy. “I know from long experience how much effort writers put into sustaining our literary culture and how little recognition they normally receive. I hope this new prize will go some way to showing our appreciation.”

The $5,000 prize will be awarded to an author whose work shows literary merit, dedication to craft and originality, and is rooted in BC’s cultural, historical or literary landscape. Starting in 2026, the award will be presented each year at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

“We are thrilled to be able to support BC-published and BC-authored books through this award,” says Marisa Alps, the Artistic and Executive Director of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts. “The Festival was formed in 1983 with the vision of amplifying Canadian writers, and we think Al and Eurithe Purdy’s award fits beautifully within this mandate.”

For this inaugural year, Alps compiled a list of eligible fiction and literary non-fiction titles published in British Columbia in 2025. (Beginning next year, the award will incorporate a formal submission process for publishers.) Excluded from consideration are reference works, children’s books, poetry, plays and self-published titles. Books will be evaluated by a dedicated reading committee, and a longlist will then be forwarded to an independent jury.

The shortlist will be announced in June 2026, and the three finalists will be invited to participate in the BC Books Showcase, a celebratory reading event hosted at the Festival of the Written Arts on Friday, August 14. The winner will be announced during the Festival’s opening reception.

The post Introducing the Al and Eurithe Purdy BC Award for Excellence appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

Why should you 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 16, 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!

The post Don’t miss your chance to subscribe to the 2026 Festival of the Written Arts appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

At the orientation you can meet other volunteers, help yourself to drinks and snacks, browse for some free books and magazines, and enter a draw for a prize basket with local goods and gift certificates for Sunshine Coast businesses. Folks are welcome to stay for the whole two hours, or just ten minutes!

• Wednesday, May 27 | 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

NEW LOCATION: Seaside Centre, 5790 Teredo Street, Sechelt.

Attending a volunteer orientation meeting is not mandatory if you want to volunteer this year, but if you can come, please drop by. You are also welcome to fill out the volunteer contact form on our website.

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Funded in part by a generous Responsive Community Grant from the Sunshine Coast Foundation, the program aims to support a new generation of storytellers on the Sunshine Coast by offering students in-depth, week-long workshops with professional writers that will inspire them and help develop their skills and storytelling/writing abilities.

Kathleen Gros, a cartoonist and graphic novelist from Vancouver, was selected as the 2026 CABC secondary writer-in-residence. Gros travelled between Chatelech Secondary and Elphinstone Secondary from February 23-27 to deliver workshops on making zines (short magazines), publishing graphic novels and creating comics. She worked with approximately 50 creative writing, art and English students at each high school.

Gros’s most recent graphic novels include Carousel Summer, Anne: An Adaptation of Anne of Green Gables (Sort Of), and Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of). She graduated with a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University of Art and Design and currently teaches students of all ages at Place des Arts in Coquitlam, and teen students at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

The CABC elementary writer-in-residence is Tanya Lloyd Kyi, who is excited to be working with grade 5, 6 and 7 students at Roberts Creek Elementary during the week of April 20-24.

Tanya Lloyd Kyi is the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults and is an instructor at the UBC School of Creative Writing. Her most recent titles include The City of Lost Cats, Feeling Your Feelings, What Will I Discover; Our Green City, Better Connected (written with her daughter, Julia Kyi); and The Best Way to Get Your Way.

The Roberts Creek Elementary Writer-in-Residence program will culminate with a celebratory public event featuring Kyi and some of the student participants reading from their work. The event will take place on Friday, April 24 at 1:30 pm at the Roberts Creek Legacy Garden (or, in the case of inclement weather, the Roberts Creek Elementary School Library).

CABC is a joint initiative of School District 46—Sunshine Coast and the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts that brings writers into Sunshine Coast classrooms to talk about books and writing and encourage students to express themselves through both the written and spoken word. Each year CABC also publishes Coastal Voices, an annual anthology of student writing.

The post A new generation of storytellers: school writer-in-residence program launched on the Sunshine Coast appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

The deadline to submit to the 16th edition of Coastal Voices is almost here!

Coastal Voices is an anthology of writing by Sunshine Coast students which is published annually by Celebration of Authors, Books and Community (CABC), a joint initiative of School District 46 – Sunshine Coast and the Festival of the Written Arts that was formed to promote literacy and to encourage youth to express themselves through both the written and spoken word.

Students in Kindergarten to grade 12 have until Friday, March 13 to submit up to three poems, stories, personal narratives or short essays with a maximum length of 500 words. Volunteer adjudicators usually receive between 700-800 submissions each year, which they then have to whittle down to 150-200 pieces for the anthology.

The anthology’s professional design is possible thanks to Edmund Arceo, the publisher and founder of Zoom magazine. Arceo has been involved with Coastal Voices since its beginning sixteen years ago, and he volunteers his time and expertise each year to produce a beautiful volume that honours and celebrates its contributors.

For more information about submitting to Coastal Voices, students can talk to their teachers, or email project coordinator John Lussier at jl******@*****bc.ca.

The post It’s time to submit your work to Coastal Voices! appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts is thrilled to be presenting An Evening of Stories and Songs with Grant Lawrence and Friends on Thursday, April 23, 2026 at the Pender Harbour School of Music.

Author, broadcaster and Sunshine Coast raconteur Grant Lawrence has created an outstanding evening of storytelling and songs. Grant will share stories from his bestselling books Adventures in Solitude and Return to Solitude, as well as his upcoming new book, Whale Tale. Between stories, songs will be performed by special musical guests Jeremy Fisher (Ottawa), Desiree Dawson (Vancouver) and Louise Burns (Vancouver Island).

Tickets are very limited! Doors will open at 6:30pm, showtime is 7:00pm. Tickets are $41.80 ($38.00 plus $3.80 in fees). Book sales courtesy of EarthFair Store.

The post An Evening of Stories and Songs with Grant Lawrence and Friends  appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

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!

The post Subscribe to the 2026 Festival of the Written Arts appeared first on Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

Special thanks to our generous auction donors…

Arts Club Theatre, BC Ferries, Canadian Tire (Sechelt), Coast Academy of Dance, Fred’s Sechelt, Gigi Hoeller Art, Painted Boat Resort Spa & Marina, Rockwater Secret Cove Resort, Sechelt Inn, and Talaysay Tours.

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