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.

31 January 2012

UW English event: Giller Prize winner Esi Edugyan reads Feb 16!

Giller Prize winner Esi Edugyan will be reading from her novel Half Blood Blues. This is part of the UW English speakers' series, organized this year by Prof. Jay Dolmage. Prof. Win Siemerling will be the MC. St. Jerome's is proud to be supporting the event and spreading the word!


Please come out for the reading on Thursday February 16th, at 7:00 pm, in Siegfried Hall.



More about Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues:


It's the current, and inaugural, Globe and Mail online book club book

Bio and book synopsis from the Man Booker Prize website (Edugyan's book was a finalist!)

News release from the Giller Prize on Edugyan's award including the jury's citation:
Imagine Mozart were a black German trumpet player and Salieri a bassist, and 18th century Vienna were WWII Paris; that's Esi Edugyan's joyful lament, Half-Blood Blues. It's conventional to liken the prose in novels about jazz to the music itself, as though there could be no higher praise. In this case, say rather that any jazz musician would be happy to play the way Edugyan writes.  Her style is deceptively conversational and easy, but with the simultaneous exuberance and discipline of a true prodigy.  Put this book next to Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" – these two works of art belong together.