Winnipeg Book Festival starts a new chapter

Once known as Thin Air, the 2026 Winnipeg Book Festival marks a new chapter heading into its 29th year celebrating fiction, non-fiction and poetry with a new name, new staff and a shorter, more streamlined fest based at The Forks.

Thursday kicks off with a festival blessing and two events with Indigenous authors. Story Lodge (noon to 2 p.m.) features two videos from the new series by Rosanna Deerchild and Kim Wheeler profiling Indigenous authors working in a range of genres. From 3 to 4 p.m., a quartet of children’s authors will discuss the importance of storytelling and Indigenous languages and culture. The Love Local event on Thursday at 6 p.m., brings together a trio of Winnipeg authors — C.C. Benison, Philipp Schott and Margaret Sweatman — all working in different genres.

On Friday at noon, Niigaan Sinclair, Noé Préfontaine and Anna Dewar will discuss author Elaine Dewar’s posthumously released Oblivious, which explores the dark legacy of Canada’s residential schools and segregated hospitals. That event will be followed at 1:30 p.m. by a panel including Samantha Beiko, Ericka Fiddler and Kirsten Wurmann talking about a forthcoming graphic novel from the Prison Libraries Committee.

Aspiring writers will want to attend the 7×7 event Friday at 3 p.m., featuring seven speakers (including author Zilla Jones, publisher Kyla Neufeld and Chris Hall of McNally Robinson) each offering seven-minute presentations about writing and publishing. Both Saturday and Sunday kick off with river walks with writers at 10 a.m.

Saturday’s sessions include a talk on travel writing with Will Ferguson and Bill Gaston at 11 a.m., a historical fiction panel featuring Carissa Halton, Lisa Robertson and Robert Hough at 1 p.m., a poetry panel featuring Patrick Friesen, Laurie D. Graham and bill bissett at 2:30 p.m., a mystery fiction event with Ferguson, Marie-Josée Poisson and David Jón Fuller at 4 p.m. and sessions focusing on fantasy (8 p.m.) and horror writing (9:30 p.m.)

Sunday’s events kick off with a panel on mothering at 11 a.m. followed by a session on memoirs with Jónína Kirton, Andrea Gunraj and Julian Brave Noisecat at 12:30 p.m., a session on gender, ethnicity and family at 2 p.m. featuring Hollay Ghadery, Sam K MacKinnon and Tara Geraux, and a short-fiction trio including Ghadery, Catherine Hunter and M. Jay Smith at 3:30 p.m.

The festival also includes two paid/ticketed events: the celebration of 30 years of Richard Van Camp’s The Lesser Blessed on Friday at 6 p.m and the launch of Michelle Good’s new novel Eliza Sunshine on Saturday at 6 p.m. Admission for each event is $20.

While most Winnipeg Book Festival events are free, registration in advance is recommended. For the full calendar of events, see plumewinnipeg.ca; to register or get tickets for events see wfp.to/ixr.

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The short list for the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize, named after the former Manitoba Free Press and Winnipeg Free Press editor, has been announced, with five authors (including a Winnipegger) in contention for the prize awarded to “the best book on Canada, Canadians, and/or Canada’s place in the world.”

In contention for the $12,000 prize are Winnipeg’s Allan Levine for The Dollar a Year Men: How the Best Business Brains in Canada Helped to Win the Second World War; Marcello Di Cintio for Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers; Peter Kuitenbrouwer for Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada’s Sweetest Obsession; Greg Mercer for The Lobster Trap: The Global Fight for Seafood on the Brink; and John Sandlos and Arn Keeling for The Price of Gold: Mining, Pollution, and Resistance in Yellowknife.

The winner will be announced on Oct. 13.

ben.sigurdson@winnipegfreepress.com