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.

23 September 2013

Christian Campbell reads 3 October!

Join us for the dynamic first event in our Literartistry series. Christian Campbell will be reading for us on Thursday 3 October at 4:30pm in STJ 3027. Brianna Mantynen will be the opening act.

Photo credit: Toni McCrae
Christian Campbell is a Trini-Bahamian poet, scholar and cultural critic.  He has lived in the Caribbean, the US, the UK and Canada and this movement also deeply informs his work.  His first book, Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), won the 2010 Aldeburgh First Collection Prize (UK), a Lannan Fellowship (US) and was a finalist for the Cave Canem Prize (US), the Forward Prize for the Best First Book (UK) and the inaugural Guyana Prize for Literature (Caribbean).  He is the second Caribbean poet to be shortlisted for the Forward Prize and the first poet of colour to win the Aldeburgh Prize, the oldest prize for a first book of poetry in the UK.  Running the Dusk was also named one of the best books of 2010 by the Caribbean Review of Books, Horizon Review and Poetry International.  Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa calls Running the Duskthe gutsy work of a long-distance runner who possesses the wit and endurance, the staying power of authentic genius.”    
Campbell’s poetry and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies such as Callaloo, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature and elsewhere.  His work has been translated into Spanish in the anthology Poetas del Caribe InglesHe has received awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Arvon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center, the University of Birmingham and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.  In 2012, he delivered the fifteenth annual Derek Walcott Lecture for Nobel Laureate Week in St. Lucia (the youngest chosen; former lecturers include Wole Soyinka and Rex Nettleford), was a keynote speaker and poet at “The Power of Caribbean Poetry—Word and Sound” Conference at the University of Cambridge and also was an invited poet at Poetry Parnassus, the international poetry festival at the Cultural Olympiad of the recent Olympic Games.  Campbell, who studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and received a PhD at Duke, is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto where he is working on a book on black diaspora poetics. 

13 September 2013

Announcing our 2013-14 Series: Literartistry!

The theme of this year's Reading Series at St Jerome's is LITERARTISTRY, to showcase literature's dance with other artistic media. We feature writers whose work is often multi-modal, incorporating aspects of the graphic arts, of experimentation with sound, and of dramatic performance.

Here's our exciting lineup for 2013-14:

Christian Campbell -- Thursday 3 October, 4:30pm, STJ 3027

M. NourbeSe Philip -- Thursday 24 October, 4:30pm, STJ 3027

Ann Shin -- Thursday 7 November, 4:30pm, STJ 3027 -- our thanks to Brick Books for their support

Steve McCaffery -- Thursday 28 November, 8pm, STJ 3014

Gabe Foreman -- Friday 24 January, 8pm, STJ 3027

Lisa Moore -- Wednesday 26 February, 8pm, Siegfried Hall

rob mclennan -- Wednesday 5 March, 4:30pm, STJ 2011

Daniel David Moses -- Thursday 27 March, 4:30pm, STJ 3014

And, once again, before each reading we'll be featuring up and coming creative writers from here at St Jerome's and UW.

Hope to see you there!