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.

07 December 2017

Mariam Pirbhai reads 12 January!

We're excited to kick off our Winter term readings with Mariam Pirbhai!
Please join us on Friday 12 January at 4:30pm in SJ1 3027.

Mariam Pirbhai is the author of a debut short story collection titled Outside People and Other Stories (Inanna 2017), praised by award-winning novelist Shani Mootoo for its “clear-eyed compassion, generosity and literary brilliance.” Her short fiction has also appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals, including Her Mother’s Ashes: South Asian Women Writers in Canada and the United States, Pakistani Creative Writing in English, jaggerylit and the Dalhousie Review. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the President of CACLALS (the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), Canada’s leading literary association devoted to postcolonial studies and global Anglophone literatures. She lives and works in Waterloo, Ontario.


Outside People and Other Stories (Inanna 2017) is Waterloo-based author Mariam Pirbhai’s debut collection of short fiction, featuring the stories of the most “invisible” segments among Canada’s “visible minority,” as they navigate the Canadian or trans-national workforce against the backdrop of contemporary forces and debates, including equal employment opportunities, temporary migrant work, the transnational family, Islamophobia and forms of precarious citizenship.




News: Mariam's book has just been ranked #6 in CBC's Top 95 Must Read recommended books of 2017! And it was also given special mention on the Rogers Writer's Trust must reads of 2017.