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 August 2012

Our 2012-13 Series


Get ready for another year of dynamic readings at St Jerome's! We are very excited about our lineup, and the theme that guides it, specially suited to St Jerome's and Waterloo. 

Our upcoming Reading Series -- Metaphoriment -- will explore how the literary arts approach the sciences, how metaphor meets experiment. Our vision for this series begins with the assumption that the sciences and the literary arts are both grounded in the act of exploration. The languages of description and imagination are, in different ways, foundational to both. Scientists and writers alike start with intent attention to the worlds around and within them, and then imagine themselves into worlds that could, or should, be. Both the scientist and the writer create their arts in that tense but invigorating space between the control one might exert over one’s mediums and the willingness and necessity not to know what the outcome might be.

In selecting authors for our Metaphoriment series, we have defined the sciences rather broadly to include, for instance, representations of medicine, physics, and biology. Some of our writers are practicing doctors, veterinarians, or scientists. Some explore scientific themes in their writing, employ science as metaphor, or apply experimental principles to their creative practice.

Here's what we have in store:

Brian Henderson and Shane Neilson -- Thursday, 25 October, 8pm, STJ 3014
Michael Boughn and Christopher Dewdney -- Tuesday, 27 November, 8pm, STJ 3014
Susan Musgrave -- Thursday, 24 January, 8pm, STJ 3014
Nora Gould -- Thursday, 31 January, 4:30pm, STJ 3014 With the generous support of Brick Books
Anne Michaels -- Wednesday, 6 February, 4:30pm, STJ 3027
Vincent Lam -- Tuesday, 19 March, 8pm, St Jerome's Community Centre
Adam Dickinson -- Thursday, 4 April, 4:30pm, STJ 3014

All readings are free and open to the public, thanks to the assistance of St Jerome's University, and the fundamental support of the Canada Council for the Arts. 

Hope to see you there!