VICTORIA FESTIVAL OF AUTHORS SOCIETY

Victoria Festival of Authors is Vancouver Island’s largest annual celebration of books and book lovers. Our hybrid festival offers in-person programming of regional authors most offered by livestream for those viewing from home as well as virtual programming of authors from around Canada. Programming includes readings and themed panel discussions enabling authors to discuss their writing process and to engage with festival attendees in informal settings about a broad range of literary arts. Published authors and emerging authors appear together in panel events helping to introduce new diverse voices to festival attendees. We celebrate the richness of Canada’s literary community and are focused on the removal of participation barriers for authors and audience members. In 2024 Victoria Festival of Authors hosted a hybrid festival. We presented nine in-person events five of which were livestreamed that celebrated writers from British Columbia. A further four virtual events featured authors from across Canada. This variety of delivery options with captioning provided as well as American sign language interpretation on request increased the accessibility of our programming. We further increased accessibility of our events by offering sliding-scale pricing—with a 'free ticket' option—for all virtual and evening in-person events. Registration for events increased to 813 in 2024 compared to 747 the previous year. Volunteers for our festival take on many important roles including in-person and online event support social media content and management and author interviews for the festival newsletter and blog.