The Reading Series at St. Jerome's

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

2012-01-31T12:19:00.000-05:00

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.

Rishma Dunlop and Tanis MacDonald read on February 9th!

2012-01-25T18:42:00.000-05:00

Our first Winter 2012 reading features TWO poets: Rishma Dunlop and Tanis MacDonald.
Join us Thursday, February 9th, 4:30pm, STJ 3014.
The reading is free and all are welcome.

Rishma Dunlop is an award winning Canadian poet, playwright, essayist, and translator. Her fifth book of poetry, Lover Through Departure: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2011. Her previous books include White Album, Metropolis, Reading Like a Girl, and The Body of My Garden. She won the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003 and has been a finalist for the CBC Prizes in Poetry and Creative Non-Fiction, and the Vanderbilt-Carter V. Cooper Prize for Fiction. She was awarded the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Research Chair in Creative Writing in 2009-2010, and she was recently elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, for achievement in the arts and the humanities. She is a professor of English and Creative Writing at York University, Toronto. Visit her website at www.rishmadunlop.com

Photo credit: John Roscoe

Tanis MacDonald is the author of three books of poetry: Holding Ground (Seraphim Editions, 2000); Fortune (Turnstone Press, 2003) and most recently, Rue the Day (Turnstone Press, 2008). She is also the editor of Speaking of Power: The Poetry of Di Brandt (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006) and her study on the feminist elegy in Canada, The Daughter’s Way: Canadian Women’s Paternal Elegies (Wilfrid Laurier University Press) will be available in Spring 2012. Her poetry has been widely anthologized and she is well-known as a reviewer and personal essayist as well as a poet and an academic. She won the Bliss Carman Poetry Prize, awarded jointly by Prairie Fire Magazine and the Banff School of Fine Arts, in 2003. She is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Visit her website at www.tanismacdonald.com

Sue Goyette reads December 1!

2011-11-18T10:17:00.000-05:00

Sue Goyette, novelist and poet, joins us for an end-of-term / pre-Christmas reading. Her latest work is a collection of poetry called Outskirts from Brick Books, just out this year. And we're very grateful to Brick Books for their help in making this event possible. So much to celebrate! So please join us Thursday, December 1st, at 4:30pm, in STJ 3014.

Sue Goyette lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia and has published two books of poems, The True Names of Birds and Undone (Brick Books). Her novel, Lures (HarperCollins), was published in 2002. She's been nominated for several awards including the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther, the Gerald Lampert, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and won the 2008 CBC Literary Prize for Poetry and the 2010 Earle Birney Prize. Her third collection of poems, outskirts, is forthcoming from Brick Books in the spring of 2011. Her poetry has appeared on the Toronto subway system, in wedding vows and spray-painted on a sidewalk somewhere in St. John, New Brunswick. Sue currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Dalhousie University.

Adwoa Badoe reads!

2011-09-28T13:49:00.006-04:00

Join us on Thursday October 6th, at 4:30 pm, in STJ 3014, for a reading by Adwoa Badoe.
It promises to be a lively storytelling session!

Adwoa Badoe was born in Ghana and has lived in Guelph, Ontario, Canada since 1992. She has published on three continents, North America, Europe and Africa. She is the author of sixteen books, the co-author of two others and has also contributed a memoir in the Canadian Anthology, My Wedding Dress. Her books include a collection of folktales, picture-books, as well as readers for educational markets. In her brand new novel, Between Sisters, she tells the story of a sixteen year old girl of Accra, Ghana. Gloria has been blindsided by the sudden demands of adulthood, but like any teenager, she is trying to find a way to reconcile her future, her family, her identity and her own interests. Between Sisters is published by Groundwood Books, House of Anansi. Her other books by Groundwood are The Pot of Wisdom: Ananse Stories and Nana’s Cold Days. Adwoa Badoe is also a speaker and an award winning performance artist of storytelling and dance.

2011-12 Series

2011-09-21T17:00:00.001-04:00

These are the writers who will be visiting St. Jerome's and sharing their work with us this year. Save the dates! And keep an eye out for more about these authors and events, here on the Reading Series blog.

fall term 2011:

Drew Hayden Taylor, novelist and playwright -- Wednesday, September 21st, 4:30pm, Siegfried Hall

Adwoa Badoe, storyteller -- Thursday, October 6, 4:30pm, STJ 3014

Susan Goyette, novelist and poet -- Thursday December 1st, 4:30pm, STJ 3014

winter term 2012:

Rishma Dunlop and Tanis MacDonald, poets --Thursday, February 9th, 4:30pm, STJ 3014

Julia McCarthy, poet -- Thursday, March 8th, 4:30pm, STJ 3014

Drew Hayden Taylor Reads Sept. 21!

2011-09-02T12:11:00.004-04:00

To kick off our 2011-12 series, we are proud to have Drew Hayden Taylor read for us on Wednesday, September 21. His most recent books are the novel Motorcycles and Sweetgrass ("A story of magic, family, a mysterious stranger . . . and a band of marauding raccoons"), and the play, Dead White Writer on the Floor.

To tell you about him, we can't hope to improve on the bio from his website:

Originally from the Curve Lake First Nations, in Central Ontario, Drew has spent the last two decades travelling the world and writing about it from the Aboriginal perspective. An award-winning playwright, author, columnist, film maker and lecturer, he has managed to bridge the gap between cultures by tickling the funny bone.
There is a Hopi proverb that says "A smile is sacred" and Drew Hayden Taylor believes it, even though he's not Hopi.

Join us September 21 at 4:30 in Siegfried Hall -- the readings are free, and all are welcome!

And watch this space for full details of this year's exciting series, coming soon.

The 2011-12 Series

2011-06-05T20:28:00.000-04:00

Our announcement regarding next year's selected writers will be made soon. Check back again soon.

Hope to see you at next year's readings!

Roy Miki Reading -- Tues., April 5th -- 4:30 pm. -- STJ3014

2011-04-03T23:55:00.000-04:00

Come join us for Roy Miki's Reading.
Tuesday, April 5th -- 4:30 p.m. -- STJ 3014

Roy Miki is a writer, poet, and editor who lives in Vancouver. He is the author of numerous publications, including Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Raincoast 2004), a work that explores the Japanese Canadian redress movement through a creative blend of personal reflection, documentary history, and critical examination, and There (New Star Books 2006), his fourth book of poems. His third book of poems, Surrender (Mercury Press 2001), received the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. He is currently completing “Mannequin Rising,” a book-length series of poems and photo collages that probe the internal effects of commodity culture (forthcoming spring 2011 from New Star Books). He received the Order of Canada in 2006 and the Order of British Columbia in 2009.

Hope to see you there. As always, the readings are free and open to the public.

Guy Gavriel Kay Reading -- March 29th

2011-03-21T09:01:00.000-04:00

Come join us for Guy Gavriel Kay's Reading.

March 29th -- 4:30 p.m. -- St. Jerome's, Room 3014

Hope to see you there!

Guy Gavriel Kay was born in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and raised in Winnipeg. In the 1970’s he was retained by the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien to assist in the editorial construction of Tolkien’s posthumously published The Silmarillion. He returned to Canada from Oxford to take a law degree at the University of Toronto and was called to the Bar in Ontario.

Kay became Principal Writer and Associate Producer for the CBC radio series, “The Scales of Justice”, dramatizing major criminal trials in Canadian history. He also wrote several episodes when the series later moved to television. He has written social and political commentary for the National Post and the Globe and Mail and for The Guardian in England, and has spoken on a variety of topics at universities and conferences around the world.

In 1984, Kay's first novel, The Summer Tree, the first volume of The Fionavar Tapestry, was published to considerable acclaim in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, and then in a number of countries and languages. In 1990 Viking Canada’s edition of his novel Tigana reached the national bestseller list, and his next book A Song for Arbonne debuted at #1 nationally. Kay has been a bestseller with each novel since.

Translations now exceed twenty languages and Kay has toured and read on behalf of his publishers and at literary events across Canada, and in countries ranging from the United States and England to Poland, France, Russia, Croatia, Serbia, Mexico, and Greece, among others, with his most recent international appearance being in China. He was been nominated for and has won numerous literary awards and is the recipient of the International Goliardos Prize (presented in Mexico City) for his contributions to the literature of the fantastic.

Guy Gavriel Kay lives in Toronto with his wife and sons.

Gregory Scofield -- Reading Feb. 15th

2011-02-14T11:42:00.000-05:00

Please join us for Gregory Scofield's reading Feb. 15th at 4:30 pm in STJ 3014.

Gregory is one of Canada's leading Aboriginal writers whose five collections of poetry have earned him both a national and an international audience. He is particularly known for his unique and dynamic reading style, one that blends oral storytelling, song, spoken word, and the Cree language.

Hope to see you tomorrow.

David Morrell, creator of Rambo, speaks

2010-12-21T11:03:00.000-05:00

A SJU English alumnus of whom we are very proud, David Morrell, author of First Blood, Creepers, The Spy who Came for Christmas, The Successful Novelist, and many other works, will be giving a talk about writing. This is one of the feature events in the celebrations of the University of Waterloo English Department's 50th anniversary.

27 January 2011, 7pm, Siegfried Hall. Cost: $10.
To find out more, and to register, please visit
UW English at 50: Events

Charlene Diehl and Janice Kulyk Keefer Readings This Week

2010-11-16T18:56:00.000-05:00

We have an exciting week of events.

Please join us Wednesday, Nov. 17th at 7:30 (STJ 2017) for our Reading Series' Special Event. Charlene Diehl will be reading from Out of Grief, Singing, a memoir of a mother's loss of her newborn. Charlene is a former St. Jerome's professor. Please help us welcome her back for her reading. We'll have some refreshments and parking is available starting at 7 p.m. in Lot B at St. Jerome's.

And on Thursday, Nov. 18th at 4:30 (STJ 2017), we'll welcome Janice Kulyk Keefer. Janice is the author of over a dozen works of poetry, prose and literary criticism. Among her awards are first prize in the CBC radio literary competition and the National Magazine Award, the 13th Marian Engel Award and a SSHRC artist/researcher fellowship. Under Eastern Eyes, her study of Canadian fiction from the Maritimes, and her novel The Green Library were both shortlisted for a Governor General’s award. Her most recent novel, The Ladies Lending Library, won the Kobzar prize. She is a Professor of English at the University of Guelph and also teaches in Guelph-Humber’s MFA in Creative Writing Program.

As always, all are welcome and the events are free. Hope to see you there.

Veronica Austen

Schedule Update: some bad and some very good Special Event news

2010-10-27T12:06:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, we're having to cancel Kathleen Winter's Nov. 11th visit. But we're very excited by her nomination for the Giller prize (winner to be announced Nov. 9th) and wish her all the best at this very busy and exciting time. We're working on a possible rescheduled visit, so I'll update you as soon as I can.

And now for some great news: we have a Reading Series Special Event to announce.

Charlene Diehl will be reading
on November 17th at 7:30pm in STJ2017.

We're very excited to be adding this Special Event to the Series. As many of you might know, Charlene's visit to St. Jerome's marks a homecoming of sorts, Charlene having once been a professor of English here.

Charlene will be reading from her recently published Out of Grief, Singing: A Memoir of Motherhood and Loss.

We look forward to welcoming Charlene back to St. Jerome's. Hope to see you at the event. Remember all are welcome and the event is free.

Updated Schedule

2010-10-01T10:54:00.001-04:00

Exciting things are already happening with the Series this year. Thanks to the help of The New Quarterly and the SJU English Department, we've been able to add one more reading to the Series: Kathleen Winter on Nov. 11th. Here's the updated schedule (note too that the locations of the Winter term readings have been added):

Richard Cumyn

Thursday, October 14th, 4:30 pm, STJ 2017
Richard is widely published in Canada, his work often appearing in The New Quarterly, Fiddlehead, and Prairie Fire. With two of his earlier collections of short fiction shortlisted for the ReLit Award, his latest collection of short fiction The Young in their Country is a finalist for the inaugural Enfield & Wizenty Fiction Prize.

Christian Bök
Tuesday, October 26th, 4:30 pm, Siegfried Hall
Christian Bök is the author of Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence.

**NEW ADDITION: Kathleen Winter
Thursday, November 11th, 4:30 pm, STJ2017
Kathleen Winter's story collection, boYs (Biblioasis 2007), won the Metcalf Rooke Award and the Winterset Award. Her novel, Annabel (Anansi 2010), has been longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She lives in Montreal. (Thanks TNQ and SJU Dept. of English for this addition to the Series)

Janice Kulyk Keefer
Thursday, November 18th, 4:30 pm, STJ2017
Janice Kulyk Keefer is the author of over a dozen works of poetry, prose, and literary criticism. With work previously shortlisted for GG awards, her most recent novel The Ladies Lending Library won the Kobzar prize.

Gregory Scofield
Tuesday, February 15th, 4:30 pm, STJ 3014
Gregory Scofield is a leading Canadian poet whose work blends oral modes of storytelling with song and the Cree language. His much read Thunder through my Veins (1999), a poetic memoir, is described as a “heartbreaking” story of “self-discovery, acceptance, and the power of art to heal” (harpercollins.ca). His latest collection kipocihkân: Poems New & Selected was released in 2009.

Guy Gavriel Kay
Tuesday, March 29th (tentative), 4:30 pm, STJ 3014
In 1984, Kay's first novel, The Summer Tree was published to considerable acclaim. In 1990 Viking Canada’s edition of his novel Tigana reached the national bestseller list, and his next book A Song for Arbonne debuted at #1 nationally. Kay has been a bestseller with each novel since.

Roy Miki
Tuesday, April 5th, 4:30 pm, STJ 3014
Roy is the author of numerous publications, including Surrender (Mercury Press 2001) which received the GG’s Award for Poetry and Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Raincoast 2004). He is currently completing “Mannequin Rising,” a book-length series of poems and photo collages that probe the internal effects of commodity culture (forthcoming spring 2011).

2010-2011 Schedule

2010-09-14T22:46:00.001-04:00

We've got a great line-up for the Series this year. Hope to see you there!

The Reading Series at St. Jerome's

2010-2011

Richard Cumyn
Thursday, October 14th, 4:30 pm, STJ 2017

Richard is widely published in Canada, his work often appearing in The New Quarterly, Fiddlehead, and Prairie Fire. With two of his earlier collections of short fiction shortlisted for the ReLit Award, his latest collection of short fiction The Young in their Country, to be released this Fall, is a finalist for the inaugural Enfield & Wizenty Fiction Prize.

Christian Bök
Tuesday, October 26th, 4:30 pm, Siegfried Hall

Christian Bök is the author not only of Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence.

Janice Kulyk Keefer
Thursday, November 18th, 4:30 pm, STJ2017

Janice Kulyk Keefer is the author of over a dozen works of poetry, prose, and literary criticism. With work previously shortlisted for GG awards, her most recent novel The Ladies Lending Library, which explores the various familial and group tensions experienced by a community of Ukranian-Canadian families, won the Kobzar prize.

Gregory Scofield
Tuesday, February 15th, 4:30 pm

Gregory Scofield is a leading Canadian poet whose work blends oral modes of storytelling with song and the Cree language (harbourpublishing.com). His much read Thunder through my Veins (1999), a poetic memoir, is described as a “heartbreaking” story of “self-discovery, acceptance, and the power of art to heal” (harpercollins.ca). His latest collection of poetry kipocihkân: Poems New & Selected was released in 2009.

Guy Gavriel Kay
Tuesday, March 29th (tentative), 4:30 pm

In 1984, Kay's first novel, The Summer Tree was published to considerable acclaim. In 1990 Viking Canada’s edition of his novel Tigana reached the national bestseller list, and his next book A Song for Arbonne debuted at #1 nationally. Kay has been a bestseller with each novel since. His most recent novel Under Heaven was released in 2010.

Roy Miki
Tuesday, April 5th, 4:30 pm

Roy Miki is the author of numerous publications, including Surrender (Mercury Press 2001) which received the GG’s Award for Poetry and Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Raincoast 2004) and. He is currently completing “Mannequin Rising,” a book-length series of poems and photo collages that probe the internal effects of commodity culture (forthcoming spring 2011 from New Star Books).

The locations of the latter readings will be posted when available. Check back soon!

Our 2010-2011 Series!

2010-06-28T13:12:00.000-04:00

We're working on an exciting roster of readers for the coming year -- details to be announced soon. Watch this space!