Lit Pen: A Victoria Festival of Authors Podcast

This week on Lit Pen, we’ll hear from Jane Billinghurst, an alumnus of VFA 2022. Jane has written seven books and translated the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees by German forester Peter Wohlleben. She and Peter collaborated to write Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America (Greystone Books, April 2022), a book Tristan Gooley says will "fast-track you into the joys of spending time amongst the trees."

This week on Lit Pen, we’ll hear from Larissa Lai, an alumnus of VFA 2022. Larissa’s books include the The Lost Century, The Tiger Flu, Iron Goddess of Mercy and Salt Fish Girl. Recipient of the Duggins Novelist's Prize, the Lambda Award, the Astraea Award, and the Otherwise Honor Book, she has been a finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Mitchell Award, the Livesay Prize and the Gabrielle Roy Prize. 

This week on Lit Pen, we’ll hear from Jack Wang, an alumnus of VFA 2020.  Jack is the author of We Two Alone, winner of the 2020 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best debut collection in English and longlisted for Canada Reads 2022. He has received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the University of East Anglia. He teaches writing at Ithaca College.

This week on Lit Pen, we’ll hear from Leanne Dunic, an alumnus of VFA 2017 and VFA2020. Leanne Dunic is a multidisciplinary artist. She’s the fiction editor at Tahoma Literary Review and the leader of the band The Deep Cove. Her book of lyric prose and photographs, Wet, is forthcoming with Talon Books in Spring 2024. Leanne lives on the unceded and occupied traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

This week on Lit Pen, we’ll hear from Lorna Crozier, an alumnus of VFA 2018 and 2020. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Lorna Crozier’s latest book is Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats), singled out by both Maclean’s and The Globe and Mail as one of the best books of the year. This fall, McClelland & Stewart will be publishing After Than, her collection of poetry on grief. The recipient of many national awards, Lorna has been the guest of literary festivals all over the world, and her poems have been translated into several languages, including book-length collections in French and Spanish.