WORDFEST 2018 Jon Roe lists five events to check out at the literary festival.

1. Let’s Go Exploring

The festival starts with a celebration of a book with a name to get you in the right mindset for the rest of the fest. Let’s Go Exploring is Michael Hingston’s look into comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, beloved despite it being absent from newspapers since 1995. Monday’s event is familyfriendly, free and features Hingston, a drawing workshop by Michael Grills and a performance by The Heebee-jeebees.

2. A fight to the literary death

Literary Death Match pits four authors against each other; they perform “their most electric passages” before judges Rawi Hage, Jordan Tannahill and Alice Kuipers and only one may emerge victorious. Adrian Todd Zuniga, Literary Death Match co-creator, returns to host at DJD Dance Centre on Tuesday ($25 to $30).

3. Nourishment for the mind and body

Word Feast with Kim Thúy pairs the Canada Reads winner’s VI, which explores “the lives, loves and struggles of Vietnamese refugees as they reinvent themselves in new lands,” and chef Duncan Ly’s award-winning Asian-fusion cuisine at Foreign Concept for a lunchtime event on Thursday ($50).

4. Literary luminaries

The five authors vying for the Giller Prize gather in one place — Bella Concert Hall, Thursday night ($30 to $35). Host Shelagh Rogers leads Sheila Heti (nominated for Mother Hood), Thea Lim (An Ocean of Minutes), Esi Edugyan (Washington Black), Patrick Dewitt (French Exit) and Eric Dupont (Songs for the Cold Heart) through readings and conversations.

5. Paying tribute

Richard Wagamese, a fiction author and former National Newspaper Award-winning columnist for the Calgary Herald, died in March 2017. Wordfest presents his posthumous novel, Starlight, with an event that features his close friend Rogers; Ryan McMahon and Waubgeshig Rice, two emerging Indigenous writers who were mentored by Wagamese; and screenwriter Dennis Foon, who worked with Wagamese on the film adaptation of Wagamese’s seminal work, Indian Horse. Saturday at DJD Dance Centre ($20 to $25).