A fifth-generation Vancouverite, Alan Twigg has written sixteen books, produced six television documentaries, dozens of award ceremonies, two symposia and a music CD. He has hosted a CBC television series and can be frequently heard on CBC radio’s North by Northwest program in a segment called Turning Up The Volumes. He is the publisher/owner and writer of B.C. BookWorld, Canada’s largest circulation independent publication about books, founded in 1987.

He also founded and manages a public service reference site for and about more than 9,700 B.C. authors. In 2000 he became the first recipient of the Gray Campbell Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contributions to literature and publishing in British Columbia, having received the first and only ABPBC Media Award in 1988. In 2007 he became the second recipient of the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University “to recognize and support leaders in the humanities who are not necessarily part of the academy.” In the same year he became the first Writer in Residence at the George Price Centre for Peace in Belize.

His first of five volumes of B.C. literary history, Vancouver & Its Writers, was shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1987. First Invaders was shortlisted for the same award in 2005, the same year he won First Prize in the Lush Creative Non-Fiction contest, sponsored by subTerrain magazine. His award-winning memoir about the death of his father was re-published in the Utne Reader. In 2011, he received the Mayor’s Arts Award for Literary Arts in Vancouver.

He has founded or co-founded the B.C. Book Prizes, the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness, the VanCity Women’s Book Prize and the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for B.C. authors. He was also involved in the founding of Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards when he was theatre critic for Georgia Straight.

From 1995 to 1998 he was an editorial page columnist for The Province. He has also served on the founding board of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing and on the City of Vancouver's Public Art Committee. In 1999 he initiated a fundraising campaign for the BC Civil Liberties Association Defence Fund and for five years he coordinated shipments of nursing supplies to Belize with the assistance of DHL.

He is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Vancouver Public Library, appointed by city council to serve a two-year term. He has contributed to various publications such as Quill & Quire, Georgia Straight, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Lived Experience, Macleans, Pacific Northwest Review of Books, etc.

His book about soccer was adapted for global distribution by Reader’s Digest. Most recently he has contributed the introduction to a new biographical study of Chekhov.