The 44th annual Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts will take place August 13-16, 2026, featuring established literary stars and exciting new voices, with opportunities for writers and readers to mingle amidst Rockwood’s heritage gardens.
With 19 events and 3 workshops to choose from, there is an event for everyone! The festival will feature renowned Canadian authors such as Terry Fallis (The Marionette and The Best Laid Plans), Donna Morrissey (Tell It to the Water and Rage the Night), and Michelle Good (Eliza Sunshine and Five Little Indians).
Some of your favourite personalities on stage have now taken to the page; also here to present their new books are Mary Walsh (This Hour Has 22 Minutes), Charles Demers (comedian), and Christopher Gaze (actor and founder of Bard on the Beach).
The Festival is held in Sechelt, BC at the Rockwood Centre.
The open-air pavilion and surrounding garden offers a uniquely beautiful and intimate venue for the events.
The Festival venue also includes drink concession options including a pop-up from Strait Coffee and alcoholic/non-alcoholic soft drinks at our beverage booth, pre-order lunch options from Gourmet Girl, and a book tent hosted by Talewind Books. Following each event, patrons may head up to the Book Tent and have their books signed by the author. Take part in the free festival contests or purchase raffle tickets for a chance to win some amazing prizes!
Visit www.writersfestival.ca for more information, but don’t wait too long – tickets are selling fast!
Tickets can be purchased for $18-$20 (including tax). Workshops (special events) are $25-$40. Passes range from $100 for a day pass to $295 for the full festival. Purchase tickets online at https://writersfestival.tickit.ca or by phoning the Festival Office at 604-885-9631.
Explore how to write a glosa, a courtly form that steals a quatrail from another poet’s work to structure a poem of your own, in the course of which you create a glosa – or gloss on that poet’s work. Tangling with your chosen poet may allow her or his subtle influence to inform your tone and expand your expressive range. Workshop includes a copy of instructor Bonnie Quan Symon’s beautiful chapbook of glosas and handouts.
Use Tarot cards to write your next story with Tarot Cards tapping into your intuition to create:
– Characters
– Conflict
– Plot
A technique used by Stephen King, Italo Calvino, John Steinbeck and others.
No previous experience with Tarot Required. Beginner decks with the meanings written on them to save time, Tarot journal pages and stickers provided.
Bring your own decks with booklets if you wish.
Author Jan DeGrass will launch her new book of stories, Temptations and Travels, that are part imagination, part memory in the natural beauty of the Sunshine Coast Botanical Gardens. Temptations and Travels is a collection of stories that wander freely between fiction and lived experience. Here are tales of travels, trials and temptations. Some tales grow from remembered journeys; others from moments half-forgotten but reshaped and embellished by the storyteller.
A medieval monk is sorely tempted by a visit from a mysterious woodland woman. The author travels across the stark, volatile landscapes of Iceland, where volcanoes and rushing rivers invite wonder and introspection. A mother and daughter guard secrets from one another—each believing silence is an act of love. Elsewhere, life’s lessons are learned in unlikely forms: from a curious emu, from chance meetings with passengers on a train or from a handsome stranger in a remote British Columbia gold-rush town. Together they form a rich mosaic of travel, reflection, and the small
temptations that test human nature.
The dedicated authors from the Mini One-Day Writer’s Retreat will be reading from their manuscripts at the SCWES May Meeting, Sunday, May 31st, 2-4:30 pm, featuring Joan Fletcher’s launch of her scifi novel, “The Data Raiders.”
Join us for our one-day writers’ retreat to give yourself time away from distractions to focus on your work-in-progress, and/or engage in activities, like a group poem, in a peaceful, scene setting at Davis Bay by the sea. Come and go as you wish.
Your polished pieces may be submitted to Not An Island literary quarterly for consideration for publication.
Read your work from the retreat at the Sunday, May 31st, SCWES Meeting, Davis Bay Hall, 2 pm.
By donation. Suggested donation $10 for members $20 for nonmembers.
An informal space to share and discuss poems you love, poems that you are currently reading, or poems you have written! Poems can be from any publication or book, as well as from online resources. For teens and adults
This event happens on the first Tuesday of the month, 10:30-11:30am in the Community Room
Want to enter a Writing Contest and Win but don’t know how to do so? Join Jan DeGrass, journalist and author, to learn the basics and be on your way to entering your first literary contest.
The fee is by donation to cover Jan’s time and the venue rental (suggested donation is $15).
Call for submissions for “Snippets from a Small Town: Understanding Life on the Sunshine Coast,” sponsored by the Small Neighbourhood Grant program. Send your poetry, fiction, nonfiction, photography, and art to cathalynn@gmail.com by Monday, November 17th. Small honorariums available. Launch at Gibsons & District Public Library Wednesday, December 17th, 11 am. Cover art by Sheri Peters.
The Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society is pleased to host local award-winning mystery writer Charlotte Morganti’s book launch of The Karma Murders.
The Karma Murders
A driver falling asleep at the wheel. A truck slipping out of gear. A sailboat boom striking a sailor’s skull.
Someone is delivering fatal justice in Cheakamus, B.C. He has anointed himself as Karma’s Helper, delivering justice where it’s long overdue.
Townspeople see these accidents as random acts of fate. But P.I. Gabe Gabrieli believes the truth is more sinister. He recognizes the pattern—a killer’s signature hidden in plain sight—and studies the threads connecting the victims, searching for a common link.
Brief AGM will be held prior to the launch. Goodies at the break. All welcome. Free.
Writing Workshop with Fran Bourassa
Calling all poets, writers, and would-be writers of all ages and experience levels! Bypass your inner “editor” to find your authentic voice. Practice “free writing” short pieces from “word whip” prompts that elicit memories, emotions, and powerful ideas for poetry and stories. This method is quick, powerful, and everyone can enjoy it.
Fran Bourassa is an award-winning poet and contributing writer to numerous anthologies, including Breaking the Surface, Pacific Poetry Anthology, Force Field: 77 BC Poets.
Free but space is limited (in person only).
Registration opens on the 1st of the month here.
to Mar 31st. Literary Judges Wanted for the Sunshine Coast Book Awards for BC Authors Contest. Genres include Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Childrens/YA, and Youth books.
Award ceremony is Saturday, August 23rd, afternoon, Gibsons Public Market, Coastal Room.
Grief can be a challenging companion. Whether you have recently started experiencing grief or it’s been many years, this series can be helpful. No writing experience is necessary, just an open mind and an open heart. This weekly series on six Tuesdays gives you a way to engage with grief on a daily basis, helping you find and listen your own story. The writing activities also help you connect with one another; helping people who truly understand what it’s like to live within life-changing loss share and support one another. No platitudes, no advice, just a community of fellow grievers, writing alone, together. Offered in partnership with Sunshine Coast Hospice Society, with support from the Town of Gibsons. Free, but space is limited: advance registration for all 6 sessions required.
