Readers and writers: Your guide to gritLIT 2026

The literary festival offers five days of readings, panels, workshops, and social events that celebrate writers of all kinds and the readers who read them.

For 22 years, the Hamilton-born gritLIT has celebrated established writers, helped new ones develop, and given readers a front-row seat to well over 400 of Canada’s successful and emerging authors.

Whatever your relationship to books, poetry and stories, gritLIT, April 15 to 19, offers something for you, says festival artistic director Jessica Rose.

“Whether you're a reader who just loves reading books and enjoying books and discovering new books, it's definitely a festival for you. And when it comes to authors, we really steward authors from that very first idea they have all the way up to a published book. So we obviously welcome authors from across the country to the festival and year-round events, but we also have a lot of opportunities throughout the year for people who are just starting to get their story on a page.”

gritLIT’s goal is to introduce readers to books they are going to be excited about this year.

To that end, there are 16 readings, panel discussions, and social events over the festival’s five days where readers will hear directly from, and interact with, authors of new works, who will share their journeys, their advice, and their insights on a wide range of topics.

gritLIT is also about learning, including through seven writing workshops led by a variety of authors.

The festival begins with a virtual writing workshop with Firefly Creative. 

“It's a writing workshop for anyone. You don't have to have any writing experience and it really just sets the tone of the weekend where they'll provide a few prompts and it's just really about just getting words on a page,” says Rose, who is the book columnist at HAMILTON CITY Magazine (HCM).

gritLIT’s short story contest will soon announce its winners, who will also read from their stories at the Wednesday online event.

The in-person component of gritLIT begins at the Art Gallery of Hamilton on Thursday night with Opening Night, Opening Pages. The kick-off event will feature readings by Sarah Mughal Rana, whose much-anticipated book Dawn of the Firebird is the first of a trilogy, and Emily Ohanjanians, a professional book editor who recently released her debut novel The Book Tour. The event will be hosted by Lavanya Lakshmi, whose first book Leave and Come Back will be released in June. There will also be interactive activities planned by gritLIT’s young book lover group Next Chapter Committee, including black-out poetry and take-a-poem, leave a poem.

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“It’s going to be a fun, fun night where people can chat and interact, buy books, but also enjoy some talks from debut authors,” says Rose.

In a gritLIT tradition, Friday night’s programming is all Hamilton and this year, will include a live recording of Get Lit, a podcast by Jamie Tennant for CFMU. After 10 years, Tennant, who is an author and a frequent contributor to HCM, will wrap up that show with the episode being recorded at gritLIT.

“He's been such a big part of building that community of readers and writers in the city and championing local writers,” says Rose. “So he's going to bring in some special guests and we're just going to talk about exactly that, the just kind of nurturing spirit, I think of the Hamilton community.”

Tennant will then host the next Friday event, Hamilton Writes, where multidisciplinary verbal and literary artist, storyteller and poet Chukky Ibe, Jaclyn Desforges (Weird Babies), and Liselle Sambury (A Mastery of Monsters) will talk about reading, writing, and what it’s like to live and write in Hamilton. 

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Saturday at gritLIT will include field trips beyond the festival’s home base at Homewood Suites by Hilton to the Hamilton Farmers’ Market for a story time and art-making with Zenia Wadhwani (Once Upon a Sari, Fly in the Chai, and 'Twas the Night Before Diwali), and collage-making with author and poet Camilla Gibb at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Saturday is also the fan favourite Flash Fiction live writing contest. Participants are given a prompt and one or two requirements and have one hour to come up with a story of 500 words or less. “It's always a very fun, intense hour of writing, but the stories that come out of it are always so impressive.”

Sunday’s programming includes gritLIT’s first walking tour. Jason Allen, author of 52 Things to Do in Hamilton: The Insider's Guide to Fun in the Hammer (and another HCM contributor), is going to lead a downtown walk and encourage people to look at Hamilton a little bit differently.

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Sunday’s programming opens with The Book Club hosted by CHCH’s Annette Hamm. This year’s pick is All Things Under the Moon by Ann Y.K. Choi. Audience members are encouraged to read the book in advance and join in the conversation, but it’s not required.

The weekend panels cover everything from exploring grief, centring Indigenous voices, and writing weird as a superpower to producing speculative memoirs and the power of short stories across genres.

Cultivating a Writer’s Mindset features authors Ann Y. K. Choi and Saad Omar Khan, who each took about 20 years to publish their first novels.  

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According to the gritLIT program: “They’ll share insights on the importance of writing communities to the often-lonely act of writing, how to deal with professional rejection, and the strategies they use to keep writing in a world of imposter syndrome.”

Says Rose: “I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing their stories and just knowing that publishing a book doesn't happen overnight. And even for really successful authors, it sometimes takes years, if not decades, to get that first book out into the world.”

The Poetry in Place panel is gritLIT’s biggest panel yet, featuring 11 poets who contributed to an anthology called Poetry in Place: Poetry and Environmental Hope in a Southern Ontario Bioregion. The discussion will be hosted by anthology co-editor Deborah Bowen. 

A particularly timely panel will be In Crisis, On Crisis: Storytelling in Urgent Times featuring author James Cairns, who draws on social research, pop culture, and literature to consider not only what makes something a crisis, but how to navigate one in his new book In Crisis, On Crisis. He’s joined by Vinh Nguyen, who co-edited “Dispatches: Writing In/During Crisis” for The New Quarterly, which explores what it means to be a writer in times of political and moral crisis. Nguyen’s book, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse, brings readers to the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam when the refugee crisis was only beginning. The discussion will be moderated by Linzey Corridon.

“I think that's one of the best parts of gritLIT is we're often pairing authors who don't know each other very well, and they're on stage talking about their work. And we always see just really interesting, moving, funny conversations at those events,” says Rose.

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Over the festival weekend, workshops include: Short Burst Writing with Anne Bokma; Shipwreck with Chukky Ibe; Queering the Page with Paige Maylott; Setting with Carrianne Leung; Writing Weird: Vulnerability as Superpower with Jaclyn Desforges; and The Speculative Memoir with Vinh Nguyen.

In addition to the festival workshops, gritLIT offers monthly meetups at Mosaic on Barton, and, in conjunction with Editors Canada, gritLIT now offers Blue Pencil Consults, where professional editors sit down with emerging authors.

“That's one thing we really hear in our surveys is people want more professional development opportunities,” says Rose. So we started that out online where someone submits their manuscript or part of a manuscript and they're paired for free with a professional editor. Immediately, our first one filled up. And we knew there's a hunger for this. So we've been doing them monthly since the fall, and we decided to bring it in-person as part of the festival.”

The busy festival will wrap up with a peak forward. 

“If you've never been to a gritLIT event, we always try to do some free programming and one is Drafts and Drafts, which we close the festival with every year, where people read from unpublished drafts,” says Rose. 

“It'll be authors who have appeared throughout the festival weekend. So it's always a really good way to just get a taste of what the festival is all about. And we always say that if you come to the festival once, you’ll come back again.”

Rose says Hamilton is a wonderful place to work as a writer.

“It's truly the best, our writing community, and it's so supportive. One question I always ask when I do interviews for HAMILTON CITY Magazine, when I interview authors, I say, ‘What's unique about the Hamilton literary community? And 90 per cent of the time, they say the same thing, that it's just so welcoming. And we see so many authors moving to Hamilton from Toronto and other major cities. 
And they always tell me that the communities aren't as welcoming there. Whereas in Hamilton, there's really just the spirit of collaboration and sharing work, championing each other.”

The full festival schedule is here.