If you love meeting talented writers and hearing them read from their published work, or just want to soak up a unique cultural experience, don’t miss the opportunity to attend the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series, which launches its 2018-19 season on Sept. 18.
The series features 11 authors who will present their work, answer questions and sign books. Canadian Writers in Person is a for-credit course for students. It is also a free admission event for members of the public. All readings take place at 7 p.m. on select Tuesday evenings in 206 Accolade West Building, Keele Campus.
“We have a dazzling lineup of writers, many of whom are award winners,” says humanities Professor Gail Vanstone, coordinator of the Culture and Expression program.
On Sept. 18, author Djamila Ibrahim kicks off the 2018-19 series with a reading from her collection of short stories titled Things Are Good Now (House of Anansi Press). Set in East Africa, the Middle East, Canada and the U.S., Things Are Good Nowexamines the weight of the migrant experience on the human psyche. The collection is about remorse and the power of memory, about the hardships of a post-9/11 reality that labels many as suspicious or dangerous because of their names or skin colour alone. It’s also about hope and friendship and the intricacies of human relationships. Ibrahim was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and moved to Canada in 1990. Her stories have been shortlisted for the University of Toronto’s Penguin Random House Canada Student Award for Fiction and Briarpatch Magazine‘s creative writing contest.
Other presentations scheduled in this series are:
Oct. 2: Kathleen Winter, Lost in September, Random House
Oct. 23: Eden Robinson, Son of a Trickster, Penguin Random House
Nov. 6: Canisha Lubrin, Voodoo Hypothesis, Wolsak & Wynn Publishers
Nov. 20: Joel Hynes, We All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night, HarperCollins
Dec. 4: Stevie Howell, I left nothing inside on purpose, M&S
2019
Jan. 15: Michael Redhill, Bellevue Square, Random House
Jan. 29: Kerri Sakamoto, Floating City, Random House
Feb. 12: Kim Fu, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, HarperCollins
March 6: Katerena Vermette, The Break, House of Anansi Press
March 19: David Chariandy, Brother, Penguin Random House
Canadian Writers in Person is a course offered out of the Culture and Expression program in the Humanities Department in York’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies. For more details and information, contact Professor Gail Vanstone at gailv@yorku.ca.