Canadian Writing Comes to You -- Live!

The Reading Series has been bringing cutting-edge Canadian writers to St. Jerome's University since 1984.

Each year we strive to offer a range in our slate of visiting writers: well-established and up-and-coming, from the local area and from sea to sea, working in verse and prose and beyond. Experimental and traditional, serious and playful, beautiful and stark, cynical and celebratory -- come and sample the wealth and variety that is Canadian literature today.

These readings are special opportunities to get inside the book -- to hear writers read their own words, and speak about their own writing. Every reading includes an open question and answer session.

All readings are free and open to the public. And there's free parking!

St. Jerome's is located at 290 Westmount Road North, Waterloo, Ontario.

From its beginnings through 2018-19, the Reading Series has been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and St. Jerome's University. It now continues to be funded by St. Jerome's.

15 September 2025

Sneha Madhavan-Reese Reads 3 October!

 We kick off this year's Reading Series at St. Jerome's with a visit from poet Sneha Madhavan-Reese. 

 Please join us on Friday 3 October at 4:30pm in SJ2 1002

The reading is free and all are welcome!

photo credit: Sara McConnell

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of the poetry collections Observing the Moon and Elementary Particles. Her poems have appeared in publications around the world, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. She is the 2015 winner of Arc Poetry Magazine's Diana Brebner Prize, was shortlisted for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and received an honourable mention at the 2018 National Magazine Awards. Her second collection, Elementary Particles, was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. Sneha lives with her family in Ottawa. 

 

03 February 2025

Keith Hazzard Reads 7 March!

The last event in this year's fabulous series is a reading by Keith Hazzard!

Please join us on 7 March at 4:30pm in SJ2 1002. And please spread the word!

 

Photo credit: Karen Smythe

Keith Hazzard writes stories, poems, and plays. As Jesus Hardwell, he published Easy Living, a collection of short stories, with Exile Editions (2011). The title story from that book appeared in EXILEQuarterly, as well as being included in that year’s Journey Prize Anthology; another of its stories won a Silver National Magazine Award. Keith's plays have been produced in Saint John, Guelph, and Kitchener. He lives in Guelph, Ontario.

 His latest book is Brief Lives,
published by Exile Editions.

18 November 2024

Antonio Michael Downing Reads on 31 January!

 We kick off our Winter term events this year with a reading by Waterloo alumnus Antonio Michael Downing

Please join us on 31 January at 4:30pm in SJ2 1002.

And please spread the word!

Antonio Michael Downing spends his time writing books, singing songs, and trying to make his Grandma proud. The Taylor Prize named him one of Canada's best emerging authors. His acclaimed memoir Saga Boy was called by Giller winner Ian Williams "the triumph of Blackness everywhere…” He has been shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award and the Ontario Speaker's Book Prize and was named by the Taylor Prize for non-fiction as Canada's outstanding Emerging Author. His debut children’s book, Stars In My Crown is out now, and his debut novel for adults, Black Cherokee, is coming out in 2025. He writes and performs music as John Orpheus.

15 October 2024

Tamas Dobozy Reads 15 November!

We're delighted to announce that for our next event Tamas Dobozy will be reading for us! 

Please join us on 15 November at 4:30pm in SJ2 1002. 

Hope to see you there! Please spread the word.

 
Tamas Dobozy is a professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He lives in Kitchener. He has published four books of short fiction, When X Equals Marylou, Last Notes and Other Stories, Siege 13: Stories, and Ghost Geographies: Fictions, along with a limited-run collaborative work with artist Allan Kausch, 5 Mishaps. Siege 13 won the 2012 Rogers Writers Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for both the Governor General's Award: Fiction, and the 2013 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Dobozy has published over ninety short stories in journals such as One Story, Fiction, Agni, and Granta; won an O Henry Prize in 2011, the Gold Medal for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards in 2014, with a shortlisting and honorable mention again in 2022; and appeared in The Best Canadian Short Stories in 2017 and 2023. His scholarly work—on music, utopianism, American literature, the short story, and post-structuralism—have appeared in journals such as Canadian Literature, Genre, The Canadian Review of American Studies, Mosaic, and Modern Fiction Studies, among others. He has also published chapters in peer-reviewed anthologies published by Routledge, University of Nebraska Press, University of South Carolina Press, and Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

 His latest book is Stasio: A Novel in Three Parts, published this past summer by Anvil Press.