Home

Last August, festival organizers decided to wait 6 months before deciding on the form and scope of our 2022 festival. It was our hope that health policy, including vaccinations, would reduce the severity of the pandemic and that we would be able to resume our in-person festival. Unfortunately, with the rise of COVID variants such as Delta and Omicron, hospitalization rates remain high and government restrictions remain in place. There is still no clear picture of what August 2022 will look like. Therefore, we cannot commit to a resumption of our in-person festival. We do, however, recognize that people are suffering ZOOM fatigue, and online events are not as popular as they were near the beginning of the pandemic. With that in mind, we have decided to host a smaller scale online festival on August 12-14, 2022.

The 2022 festival will offer one scheduled weekend track of programming that includes our appearances by our festival guests: Terry Brooks, Edward Willett, Susanna Kearsley, and Hank Phillippi Ryan. It will also include the Thursday night readings, Friday night Keynotes and Saturday night 2022 Aurora Awards. In addition to our scheduled track of programming, we are inviting our affiliates to host additional concurrent programming if they wish.

The 2022 online festival, like the previous two, will be free to attend. Like 2021, we will require free registration via Eventbrite, which should begin in the April time frame. For those who have prepaid for either the 2020 or 2021 cancelled in-person festivals, passes and banquet tickets will again be rolled forward to 2023. We realize the pandemic has also brought financial hardship to many. If you require a refund, please contact us citing your name, the type of pass purchased, and the approximate time frame of the purchase, and we will see what we can do. If you can forward us your PayPal receipt, that would be especially helpful.

Best wishes to everyone this 2022 year. May the pandemic end soon, and your health and future look bright. See you in August.

Take a deep dive into the minds of serial killers and the psychopathic and sociopathic thoughts during their horrific actions (some graphic content). Evil Mind Dive

All fiction is speculative. Panelists Kevin Weir, Monica Zwikstra, Nina Munteanu, Scott Fitzgerald Gray will discuss the process and fundamentals of realistic worldbuilding, including how and when to combine imagined with real setting details for best effect. https://whenwordscollide.libsyn.com/2019-022-worldbuilding-in-fiction

You can listen to our Tenth Anniversary song by Jim Jackson as well as watching the story of how WWC came to be, narrated by Tony King.

Thank you everyone for joining us for When Words Collide's 10th Anniversary. It's been quite a ride. We hope you had an enjoyable weekend.

As there is still uncertainty surrounding the future of the pandemic which could impact our 2022 in-person festival, we are not re-opening registration until January. Those who registered for the 2020 or 2021 in-person festivals are already registered for 2022. Once we are satisfied that we won't be forced to have a lower attendance cap next summer, we will re-open registration. Sorry for the delay.

Another year, and another When Words Collide has wound to a successful conclusion. Thank you to everybody who went above and beyond to make this year's festival a success despite the pandemic!

Registration and information for 2022 will be available as soon as the situation becomes clearer. Stay tuned!

Inspirational Music