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The Word On The Street has been renowned for the quality and diversity of its event programming and our 2025 festival promises to offer the best so far. Check out our schedule for Saturday, September 20, 2025!
Crave brings 70+ recipes for all things sweet from the founders of the Prairies’ famous bakery.
Growing up on the family farm near High River, Alberta, sisters Carolyne McIntyre Jackson and Jodi Willoughby were surrounded by talented bakers, including their mother, grandmothers, and aunts. In the twenty years since the pair launched their business, Crave has become famous across the Prairies and beyond for its delicious, beautifully decorated cakes, cupcakes, and cookies, and the pale blue Crave box itself synonymous with special events. To celebrate the bakery’s twentieth year in business, Carolyne and Jodi share over 70 of their favourite sweet recipes with home cooks.
The book features stunning recipe photography and anecdotes about the bakery’s beginnings, its loyal staff and customers, and the milestones as its grown to six locations. With detailed how-tos on filling and decorating, stocking a desserts-ready pantry, and key kitchen tools, Crave includes chapters dedicated to cupcakes and cakes, cookies and bars, pies (including the ultimate pie pastry), loaves, and recipes lovingly adapted for gluten-free and vegan diets. You’ll find recipes for
Jodi Willoughby, co-founder of Crave, worked as a clinical director at a high-risk pre-school before teaming up with her sister Carolyne to establish Crave in 2004. Jodi lives with her husband Chris and sons Mac and Griffen in Calgary, Alberta.
Crave brings 70+ recipes for all things sweet from the founders of the Prairies’ famous bakery.
Growing up on the family farm near High River, Alberta, sisters Carolyne McIntyre Jackson and Jodi Willoughby were surrounded by talented bakers, including their mother, grandmothers, and aunts. In the twenty years since the pair launched their business, Crave has become famous across the Prairies and beyond for its delicious, beautifully decorated cakes, cupcakes, and cookies, and the pale blue Crave box itself synonymous with special events. To celebrate the bakery’s twentieth year in business, Carolyne and Jodi share over 70 of their favourite sweet recipes with home cooks.
The book features stunning recipe photography and anecdotes about the bakery’s beginnings, its loyal staff and customers, and the milestones as its grown to six locations. With detailed how-tos on filling and decorating, stocking a desserts-ready pantry, and key kitchen tools, Crave includes chapters dedicated to cupcakes and cakes, cookies and bars, pies (including the ultimate pie pastry), loaves, and recipes lovingly adapted for gluten-free and vegan diets. You’ll find recipes for
Carolyne McIntyre Jackson, co-founder of Crave, started her career with Safeway, before embarking on her entrepreneurial journey with her sister Jodi, establishing Crave in 2004. Carolyne lives with her husband Tony and son Oliver in Calgary, Alberta.
From the author of the Governor General’s Award shortlisted, Silver Birch Award finalist Mortified, a funny, heartfelt middle-grade novel about a young gamer who is sent to “touch grass” at a Dene First Nation culture camp
Tristen would do anything to avoid going outside. The bugs sting, the snakes are poisonous, the heat will kill you if the cold doesn’t, and bodies of water? Forget it. Tristen likes it best indoors, deep in his online world where it’s safe, with his online friends. Something he has a hard time with IRL.
But Tristen is in trouble at school again, and the principal is threatening to kick him out of this third school in two years. His mom believes the answer is to get Tristen off the games and in touch with nature and his Dene roots. This means Tristen has to spend a week to a culture camp in the wilderness. It’s his worst nightmare!
And at first it is a nightmare—no internet, no phone reception, no Bepsi!—and Tristen has no idea how to do any of the skills the other kids seem to do easily. But soon, with some surprising new friends and a few patient teachers, and a little help from technology, Tristen begins to think he might be able to hack this nature stuff after all.
KRISTY JACKSON is the author of the Governor General’s Award–shortlisted middle-grade novel Mortified. Her work draws inspiration from her Cree and German background and her long list of embarrassing moments. She is the mother of two boys and a communications professional who has spent many years working for Dene communities. Kristy runs a program that delivers books to children in seven remote Indigenous communities in Canada and volunteers for a non-profit dedicated to improving literacy in her community.
From debut author Emily Yu-Xuan Qin comes a snarky urban fantasy novel inspired by Chinese and First Nation mythology and bursting with wit, compelling characters, and LGBTQIA+ representation
Readers of Seanan McGuire, Ilona Andrews, and Ben Aaronovitch will devour this gory story—and the sweet-as-Canadian-maple-syrup sapphic romance at its monstrous heart
Tam hasn’t eaten anyone in years.
She is now Mama’s soft-spoken, vegan daughter—everything dangerous about her is cut out.
But when Tam’s estranged Aunt Tigress is found murdered and skinned, Tam inherits an undead fox in a shoebox, and an ensemble of old enemies.
The demons, the ghosts, the gods running coffee shops by the river? Fine. The tentacled thing stalking Tam across the city? Absolutely not. And when Tam realizes the girl she’s falling in love with might be yet another loose end from her past? That’s just the brassy, beautiful cherry on top.
Because no matter how quietly she lives, Tam can’t hide from her voracious upbringing, nor the suffering she caused. As she navigates romance, redemption, and the end of the world, she can’t help but wonder…
Do monsters even deserve happy endings?
With worldbuilding inspired by Chinese folklore and the Siksiká Nation in Canada, LGBTQIA+ representation, and a sapphic romance, Aunt Tigress is at once familiar and breathtakingly innovative.
Emily Yu-Xuan Qin has a Master of Arts from the University of Calgary. She is a first-generation immigrant to Canada. As a child, she was sluggish in learning English—until she picked up her first Animorphs book. She can be found online at EmilyQin.com or @EyxQin on X.
In this riveting historical thriller inspired by true-life events, Belladonna meets Bridgerton as revenge, romance, and twisted secrets take center stage in Victorian England’s royal court when Sally, a kidnapped African princess and goddaughter to Queen Victoria, plots her way to take down the monarchy that stole her from her homeland.
A young lady can take only so many injuries before humiliation and insult forge a vow of revenge. . . .
The year is 1862 and murderous desires are simmering in England. Nineteen-year-old Sarah Bonetta Forbes (Sally), once a princess of the Egbado Clan, desires one thing above all else: revenge against the British Crown and its system of colonial “humanitarianism,” which stole her dignity and transformed her into royal property. From military men to political leaders, she’s vowed to ruin all who’ve had a hand in her afflictions. The top of her list? Her godmother, Britain’s mighty monarch, Queen Victoria herself.
Taking down the Crown means entering into a twisted game of court politics and manipulating the Queen’s inner circle—even if that means aligning with a dangerous yet alluring crime lord in London’s underworld and exploiting the affections of Queen Victoria’s own son, Prince Albert, as a means to an end. But when Queen Victoria begins to suspect Sally’s true intentions, she plays the only card in Victorian society that could possibly cage Sally once again: marriage. Because if there’s one thing Sally desires more than revenge, it’s her freedom. With time running out and her wedding day looming, Sally’s vengeful game of cat and mouse turns deadly as she’s faced with the striking revelation that the price for vengeance isn’t just paid in blood. It means sacrificing your heart.
Inspired by the true story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Queen Victoria’s African goddaughter, The Queen’s Spade is a lush and riveting historical thriller for fans of This Ravenous Fate, A Dowry of Blood, and Grave Mercy.
Sarah Raughley is a Nigerian-Canadian novelist and a member of the Royal Society of Canada: the national council of distinguished Canadian scholars, scientists, and artists. She’s best known for her YA books: The Effigies Series, The Bones of Ruin Trilogy, and The Queen’s Spade duology. Raughley is also an English professor and public intellectual who has written for journals such as The Washington Post and CBC. You can find out more about her work at sarahraughley.com.
After the sudden death of her husband, a woman unearths surprising revelations about the man she was married to for seventeen years. A compulsively readable, darkly funny, posthumous love story about loss, grief, and unresolved relationships.
Jessica Waite’s successful, charismatic husband, Sean, is on his way home from a business trip when he collapses in a Houston airport. Having begun the day as a wife, by noon she is a widow and the sole living parent to their nine-year-old son. The day after Sean’s funeral, Jessica receives a box of his personal effects and discovers the secrets her husband had been hiding—including drug abuse, compulsive spending, infidelity, and a massive porn cache.
Jessica hides these revelations from her grief-stricken son while also trying to erase Sean from her own life. She rids their bedroom of his belongings. She grants herself a “divorce.” She conceives a revenge plan to unleash on Christmas Eve. But when things start happening that Jessica can’t explain—like signs from beyond and strange coincidences pointing her in the direction of forgiveness— she is forced to choose: Endure the bitter aftermath of her old life? Or reconsider her views?
Written with dark humor in the vein of Liz Feldman’s series Dead to Me and Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards is a searing and hilarious memoir that asks the question: Does death signify the end of a relationship, or can there be an afterlife epilogue?
When life handed Jessica Waite a riveting, horrifying and surprisingly beautiful story, she transformed herself into a writer. Her debut memoir, The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards, became an instant bestseller, featured by The Washington Post, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, The Toronto Star, and many other outlets. Jessica lives on Treaty 7 territory in the city of Calgary, Alberta. You can find her at JessicaWaite.work.
Let’s go on a walk and practice our language!
What birds will we see? I see one sîsîp / pêyak little duck!
In a celebration of the connection between language learning and the land, a young child enjoys a walk in nature and spots different birds while practicing counting from one to ten in Plains Cree. With bright illustrations, rhyming clues in English and pronunciation guides on every page, pêyak little duck is a friendly introduction to Plains Cree and a celebration of the beauty of springtime in the Prairies and the Plains.
Sandra Lamouche is a nêhiyaw iskwêw (Cree woman) from the Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta. She is a wife, mother of two boys with braids, champion women’s hoop dancer, award-winning educator and two-time TEDx speaker. She has a master of arts in Canadian and Indigenous studies and is also the author of We Belong to the Drum / mistikwaskihk kitipêyimikonaw. Sandra and her family live in Blackfoot Territory (Treaty 7) in southern Alberta.
Derek Evernden has been a full time illustrator, storyboard artist, and cartoonist for over 15 years. He is the creator the single panel comic Bogart Creek (@bogartcreek) and has provided monthly editorial cartoons for Read Alberta (readalberta.ca) since 2021. His work has also appeared in The Globe and Mail, WIRED, The American Bystander, Graydon Carter’s Airmail, The University of Calgary’s Arch Magazine, various anthologies, and three collections published by Alberta’s Renegade Arts Entertainment. He has provided storyboards and concept art for several IMAX features and dozens of commercials.
Jean McCarthy is an author, artist, poet, and podcaster based in southern Alberta. Internationally recognized for her award-winning blog UnPickled and podcast The Bubble Hour, Jean has become a beloved voice for personal growth and authentic storytelling.
She is an experienced advocate of indie publishing and has helped numerous local authors make their book dreams a reality. Jean’s independently published books include self-help guides on mental health and recovery, a poetry collection, and picture books for children.
