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

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!

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!

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!

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

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!

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

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!