Festival History | The Word On The Street

The Word on the Street festival strives to promote literacy by bringing the literature of Canadian, and particularly British Columbian, artists to as broad an audience as possible. Our goal is to attract people of all ages and backgrounds to a festival in which each event is at once educational and entertaining. The Word on the Street is Vancouver's (and quite probably Western Canada's) best-attended annual literary event.

The Vancouver Book and Magazine Fair Society was incorporated in 1995 and produced the first Word on the Street Vancouver festival that year. Modelled on Toronto's Word on the Street festival, the first Vancouver festival was held at the then newly built Vancouver Public Library, featured 60 exhibitors and attracted 18,000 festival-goers.

Since then the Society has maintained consistent growth of the Word on the Street festival, attracting increasing numbers of Vancouverites and a growing number of visitors from around British Columbia and across Canada, making it a primary event in Western Canada's literacy and literary community.

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