North Shore Writers Festival: Lunchtime Writers' Café

Chat with authors from the North Shore Writers' Association, who will facilitate discussions around writing fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Bring your questions and enthusiasm for a lively chat. You can choose to chat about fiction with Erin MacNair, chat about nonfiction with Carmen Farrell, or chat about poetry with Trish Gauntlett. 

There will be two 25-minute sessions; one will start at 1 p.m., and the next at 1:30. We’ll email you the week before to let you know which session to attend.

FREE!  Registration is required; please specify which group you’d like to join (fiction, nonfiction or poetry). Maximum of 6 people per session.

This workshop is presented by the North Shore Writers' Association.

Interested in attending more than one Festival event? You must register for each event separately to guarantee your spot at each event. 

For more information on this and other festival events, visit www.northshorewritersfestival.com 

Register

About the presenters

Erin MacNair's award-winning fiction stories are published in a wide array of magazines and anthologies. With support from the Canada Council, she’s completed a collection of short stories, The Museum of Admirable Suffering, due for publication in 2028.

Carmen Farrell is a force behind community initiatives for neurodiverse youth, from elementary school through college. Most of her published creative nonfiction focuses on disability and inclusion, challenging the assumption that a “normal” way to be exists. Her work appears in several journals and has been a finalist in national competitions, including the 2025 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers.

Trish Gauntlett is a long-time member of the North Shore Writers’ Association. Her awards include first prize in the Federation of BC Writers literary competition for short fiction and various prizes for poetry, short fiction and short non-fiction. She has published two novels, The Gods of Thought and Memory and The Scales of Anubis, as well as Bending Starlight, an anthology.

About the Festival

The North Shore Writers Festival (NSWF) is presented in partnership by North Vancouver City Library, North Vancouver District Public Library, and West Vancouver Memorial Library. The NSWF would not be made possible without support from the Friends of the Library groups at NVDPL and WVML, North Shore Writers’ Association, Kidsbooks, and the North Shore News.

The Festival takes place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) , and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. The Coast Salish Peoples have long used oral storytelling to pass on and preserve their cultural teachings. This powerful tradition highlights the important role that stories play in our lives. We are grateful to host the North Shore Writers Festival on the lands of these Nations and honour the art of storytelling.