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.

05 January 2015

Patrick Friesen reads 22 January!

Please join us for a reading by Patrick Friesen on 22 January at 4:30pm in STJ 3014. 

Photo by Terence Young
Patrick Friesen, formerly of Winnipeg, now lives in Victoria. He writes poetry, essays, drama, scripts, songs, and text for dance and music; he has also co-translated several Danish poetry books with P. K. Brask. Friesen adapted his book The Shunning for stage; it premiered at the Prairie Theatre Exchange in 1985 and was staged in 2011 at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Friesen has collaborated with various musicians, choreographers and dancers and has recorded two CDs of text and improv music. He was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1997, for the Dorothy Livesay Award in BC in 1998 and 2003, won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award in Manitoba in 1996 and the ReLit Prize for poetry in 2012. His most recent poetry book were jumping in the asylum (Quattro Press, 2011) and a dark boat (Anvil Press, 2012). His upcoming book of poetry, a short history of crazy bone, will be out with Mother Tongue Publishing in early 2015.