BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Wakefield Writers Fête - ECPv6.18.2//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Wakefield Writers Fête X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.writersfete.com X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Wakefield Writers Fête REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Toronto BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20250309T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20251102T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20260308T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20261101T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20270314T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20271107T060000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20261017T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20261017T210000 DTSTAMP:20260928T150350Z CREATED:20260825T191151Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260928T150350Z UID:10000019-1792263600-1792270800@www.writersfete.com SUMMARY:The Stories That Change Us DESCRIPTION:The Stories That Change Us\nwith Ian Williams and Souvankham ThammavongsaHost\, Omar Dabaghi-Pacheko\nSaturday\, October 17\, 2026\, 7-9pmCentre Wakefield La Pêche\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Giller Prize winners Ian Williams and Souvankham Thammavongsa bring wit\, tenderness and sharp observation to the complexities of change and identity through two very different works. In You’ve Changed\, Williams explores what happens when the people we love—and believe we understand—begin to change. Thammavongsa’s 2025 Giller Prize-winning novel Pick a Colour\, set over the course of a single day in a nail salon\, explores immigrant experiences\, class and the subtle power dynamics of everyday life.\n \nIn conversation with journalist Omar Dabaghi-Pacheco\, they will explore:\n \n~ How relationships change when our assumptions about the people closest to us no longer hold true.\n \n~ How family\, culture\, class and the expectations of others shape our sense of identity and influence the choices we make.\n \n~ The tensions between who we have been\, who others expect us to be and who we are becoming—and what we choose to hold onto along the way.\n \n~ What we leave behind\, what we carry forward and how we make sense of who we are becoming.\n \nA thoughtful\, lively and deeply human conversation about identity\, belonging and transformation—one that may leave you seeing yourself\, and the people around you\, a little differently.\n \nCentre Wakefield La Pêche38 Chemin de la Vallée-de-Wakefield\, Wakefield QC J0X 3G0Tickets: $30 \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Photo by Zackery Hobler 2025 \nIan Williams\nIAN 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. \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \nSouvankham Thammavongsa\nSOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA is the author of four acclaimed poetry books\, the short story collection How to Pronounce Knife\, winner of the 2020 Giller prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award\, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award\, and the novel Pick a Colour\, winner of the 2025 Giller prize. Her short stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in The New Yorker\, Harper’s Magazine\, The Paris Review\, The Atlantic\, Granta\, McSweeney’s and NOON. \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \nOmar Dabaghi-Pacheco\nOMAR DABAGHI-PACHECO is a Canadian Screen Award-winning journalist and the host of CBC Ottawa News at 6. Born and raised in Ottawa\, with deep Ecuadorian and Lebanese roots\, Dabaghi-Pacheco brings a wealth of lived and learned experience to his role as anchor of CBC Ottawa’s flagship news show. \nOmar joined CBC in 2010. Bringing his knowledge of Ottawa’s diverse cultures and fluency in four languages to cover the city’s diverse communities and its biggest breaking news stories. \nAs a reporter\, Omar is known for his pursuit of documentary storytelling. This work has taken him inside the life of a family doctor struggling to take on clients in small communities\, to Ontario towns ravaged by Fentanyl\, to remote areas of Africa fighting for basic mental health care. From his background as a video journalist and his time as a national breaking news presenter to hosting network specials on Radio One\, the common thread for Omar has always been his passion for telling stories from a community perspective and his ability to connect with people. \nOmar splits his time between Ottawa and the Edelweiss Valley with his partner and two young children. When he’s not running around the park with his kids\, or chasing the latest story\, you can find Omar in the sky\, riding thermal currents as a paragliding instructor. \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Perfect Books Ottawa and Bouquinart Librairie & Galerie d’art offer an excellent selection of books by 2026 Writers Fête authors. Meet the authors and have your books signed! URL:https://www.writersfete.com/event/the-stories-that-change-us/ LOCATION:Centre Wakefield La Pêche CATEGORIES:Writers Festival ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.writersfete.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Youve-Changed.-So-Have-We.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20261018T140000 DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20261018T160000 DTSTAMP:20261009T203802Z CREATED:20260825T190517Z LAST-MODIFIED:20261009T203802Z UID:10000020-1792332000-1792339200@www.writersfete.com SUMMARY:The Magic Among Us DESCRIPTION:The Magic Among Us: Myth Music and the Stories That Transform Our World\nwith Amal El-Mohtar and Charles de LintHost\, Kate Heartfield Sunday\, October 18\, 2026\, 2-4pmMotel Chelsea\n  \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Charles de Lint invite us into worlds where the boundaries between the ordinary and the extraordinary begin to blur. Through her luminous\, genre-defying storytelling\, El-Mohtar explores the intersections of myth\, love\, memory and time. Fresh from her win of the Hugo Award for Best Novella for The River Has Roots\, Amal brings this celebrated new work\, and her remarkable imagination\, to the conversation. De Lint\, an acclaimed pioneer of contemporary urban fantasy\, draws on folklore\, music and the magic woven into everyday life to create stories in which the extraordinary feels tantalizingly close at hand. He will share from his newest book\, Dog Sisters\, bringing another captivating story from his richly imagined world to the festival.\n \nIn conversation with Kate Heartfield\, they will explore:\n \n~ How myth\, folklore and music continue to shape the stories we tell—and the ways we understand ourselves.\n \n~ Where magic lives in the everyday\, and what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to see the world differently.\n \n~ The ways stories can cross boundaries between past and present\, the ordinary and the fantastical\, the personal and the universal.\n \n~ Why we turn to stories to make sense of our lives\, connect with one another and imagine worlds beyond the one we know.\n \n~ The transformative power of imagination—and how the stories we create can\, in turn\, transform us.\n \nA captivating conversation between two extraordinary imaginative minds about myth\, music\, storytelling and the magic that surrounds us—sometimes hidden in plain sight.\n \n\nMotel Chelsea\n1418 Québec Rte 105\, Chelsea QC J9B 2H7\nTickets: $30\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Photo credit: Ainsley Coghill \nAmal El-Mohtar\nAmal El-Mohtar writes fiction\, poetry\, and criticism. Her acclaimed novella\, The River Has Roots\, was recently awarded the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novella. She has also won the Hugo\, Nebula\, and Locus Awards for her short story “Seasons of Glass and Iron” and again for her novella This Is How You Lose the Time War\, written with Max Gladstone\, which also won the BSFA and Aurora awards\, became a New York Times bestseller\, and has been translated into over ten languages. \nShe’s a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem for her poems “Song for an Ancient City\,” “Peach-Creamed Honey\,” and “Turning the Leaves\,” and in 2012 she received the Richard Jefferies Poetry Prize for “Phase Shifting.” She has an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Ottawa\, where she taught for several years\, launching and running the creative writing program. She has been the science fiction and fantasy columnist at the New York Times Book Review since 2018. Her reviews and articles have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on NPR Books. The River Has Roots is her solo debut\, and Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is her debut collection. She lives in Ottawa\, Canada. (amalelmohtar.com) \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \nCharles de Lint\nCharles de Lint is a Canadian author with more than eighty published adult\, young adult and children’s books. Widely recognized in his field\, he has won the World Fantasy\, Aurora\, Sunburst\, and White Pine awards\, among others. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association Hall of Fame and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Organization. De Lint is also a poet\, musician\, songwriter\, performer and folklorist\, and has written a monthly book review column for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for decades. He makes his home in Ottawa\, Ontario\, with his pup Joey Strummer (“The Only Dog That Matters”). For more information\, visit his website at www.charlesdelint.com\, join him on www.patreon.com/charlesdelint or hang out with him and like-minded souls at the Mythic Café (https://www.facebook.com/groups/114379772019551).\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Photo credit: Robert de Wit \nKate Heartfield\n\nKate Heartfield is the author of historical fantasy novels including Mercutio (2026)\, in which Shakespeare’s best character opens a rift to Faerie; The Tapestry of Time (2024)\, about clairvoyant sisters in WWII; The Valkyrie (2023)\, a retelling of Norse and Germanic legends; and the Sunday Times bestseller The Embroidered Book (2022)\, about Marie Antoinette and her sister Maria Carolina. Her debut novel was rereleased as The Chatelaine in 2023. Kate has published two novellas about a time-travelling highwaywoman\, Alice Payne Arrives and Alice Payne Rides. She has also written interactive fiction through Choice of Games\, and Assassin’s Creed novels. She has a novel coming in late 2026 called The Swordmaster\, part of the Vampires of Dumas series from Solaris. \nShe won the Aurora Award for Best Novel three times\, and her fiction been shortlisted for the Aurora\, Nebula\, World Fantasy\, Crawford\, Locus\, Sunburst\, Scribe and Ottawa Book awards. A game she co-wrote\, A Death in Hyperspace\, won the Nebula Award for Game Writing in 2025. In 2024\, she was the Writer in Residence for the University of Ottawa.A former newspaper journalist\, Kate was a finalist for the National Newspaper Award in editorial writing in 2015. She lives in Canada. \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Perfect Books Ottawa and Bouquinart Librairie & Galerie d’art offer an excellent selection of books by 2026 Writers Fête authors. Meet the authors and have your books signed! URL:https://www.writersfete.com/event/the-magic-among-us/ LOCATION:Motel Chelsea CATEGORIES:Writers Festival ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.writersfete.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/the-maging-among-use-writers-fete.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR