Calgary’s Wordfest celebrating 30 years of connecting authors with readers

Calgary Wordfest is top-of-list for many writers on the festival circuit looking to connect with readers, and it is taking place right now.

An enormous festival is on right now in Calgary, an event that features dozens of authors that’s been going strong for the past 30 years.

Wordfest’s 2025 event “Imaginairium” is a six-day festival celebrating authors and the books they’ve written, and the 30th annual festival is high on the list of events for writers and, according to Shelley Youngblut, Wordfest CEO and creative ringleader, it’s the first choice of festivals for many Canadian authors.

“It’s been an enormous number of Calgarians that have made this possible for 30 years,” she said.

“It’s writers, it’s community people, it’s volunteers and it’s the authors. It’s a very vibrant and energizing community and I think it’s a tribute to Calgary that our writers’ festival is livelier, more connected and in many ways more fun than ever.”

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This year’s author lineup boasts 50 authors with more than 90 per cent being Canadian and Youngblut says the lineup is an eclectic mix of writers representing almost every genre whose books are on shelves now.

She says Wordfest has many meanings to visitors and writers.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to describe it because we’re more than a festival, we’re more than you think,” she said.

“We are human-powered delight, we are lively engagements, we are questions answered and answers questioned, we are the personification of all that is good about people and we need the idea of bright ideas in dark times more now than ever before.”

Author Vinh Nguyen grew up in Calgary and now lives and works in Toronto.

His book The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse was released in April 2025, in time for the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

It’s a memoir that revolves around the disappearance of his father while he sought refuge and the story begins in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

“I’ve attended Wordfest before, back in the day, years ago,” he said.

“So to come back here as an author and to be able to meet readers and to meet other writers that I have read and loved and admired and to meet new writers and get to know them is, you know, I’m so delighted.”

Nguyen says this is his fourth book and it took close to eight months to write.

His first three books were academic-based, so this is his first creative novel.

“I’m still a bit shocked when someone’s actually read the book,” he said.

“It’s such a gift to be read and to have these connections and to be able to talk to people and hear their thoughts about something that you’ve spent so much time with and you feel so passionate about.”

Antonio Downing lives in Kitchener, Ont., and his new book is called Black Cherokee.

“It’s about a coming of age of a young girl who is both Black and Cherokee,” he said.

“Both sides of her communities reject her because the Black people are like, ‘Why are you praying to the river?’ And the Cherokee people are like, ‘Why is your hair so curly?’ And so she has to figure out how to be.”

Downing says it’s a treat to come to Calgary’s Wordfest event and be seen and accepted by readers.

“There’s no better way than to create something and have someone else engage with it and see themselves in your creation,” he said.

“People don’t tell you, ‘Please grow up and be a writer.’ Parents don’t say that to their kids, so you’re always kind of in the back of your head, ‘Why am I doing this?’ And I think when you’re around a bunch of writers who are also doing it and made that choice, and readers who really appreciate it, you kind of go, ‘Oh, yes, this is actually why I’m doing it.’”

Wordfest runs from Oct. 14 to 19.