When Words Collide… 2023 and beyond
For those of who may not be familiar with it, When Words Collide is an annual festival for readers and writers and bookish folks of all kinds. Held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, WWC celebrated its thirteenth anniversary this year, the first nine held live in Calgary, and online the last three.
Our Butterfly-in-Chief and Head Alien at the WWC 2023 masked banquet!
And for us here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library, it has been the never-to-be-missed event of the year.
Our Butterfly-in-Chief stumbled upon it in its founding year back in 2010, and by the middle of the first day our Head Alien had received a text stating, rather emphatically, that their attendance was required the next year.
We have both been part of the festival every year since, and it has been – without a word or letter of hyperbole – life-changing.
This year’s chapter has been a touch bittersweet as it was also the last year of “Volume 1” of the festival, with a new organization and organizing committee taking over for next year. WWC 2024 will be the start of “Volume 2” of the festival, and what some of us have already started calling When Words Collide: The Next Generation.
As we process this year’s chapter… and the previous twelve… we are going to be adding more individual posts about WWC in the coming days and weeks, links to which will appear below. If you’re here soon after the initial pub of this post, we’ve started with links to some “beyond 2023” posts from the past, with more thoughts and memories to come about WWC, past, present, and future. You are invited to check back here or on our home page for new additions.
But in the meantime, or whenever you’ve stumbled upon this page, happy colliding!
– Stacey and Winston
In anticipation of Chapter 13 of the When Words Collide festival, and an opportunity to display and discuss some examples of altered book art while I’m there, I wanted to post a little post about a work I made based off of one of my favourite books, Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock…