James Alan Gardner reads 22 October!

We are excited to kick off this year's Reading Series on the theme of Alternate Realities with science fiction writer (and UW grad in applied mathematics), James Alan Gardner! 

Please join us on Thursday 22 October at 4:30pm in STJ 3014.

James Alan Gardner has published eight science fiction novels and a collection of short stories. He has won the Aurora Award twice, as well as the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Asimov’s Magazine Readers Choice award; he has also been a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo awards. In his spare time, he teaches kung fu and is working on a B.Sc. in Earth Sciences (Geology).

Check him out at http://www.thinkage.ca/~jim/Welcome.html

Our 2015-16 Series: Alternate Realities

In our upcoming series, we invite you to explore with us the elusive and attractive territory between the familiar and the fantastical, the mundane and the magical. We're thrilled to welcome a bunch of amazing Canadian writers who create a fascinating range of Alternate Realities in poetry and fiction.

Fall Term:

James Alan Gardner 22 October 4:30pm, STJ 3014

Amanda Leduc 19 November 4:30pm, STJ 3014

Elisabeth de Mariaffi 20 November 4:30pm, STJ 3027
in collaboration with Wilfrid Laurier University English Department


Winter Term: (locations TBA)

Steve Noyes 11 February 4:30pm

Catherine Hunter 25 February 4:30pm
in collaboration with Wilfrid Laurier University English Department

Catherine Greenwood 10 March 4:30pm

Larissa Lai and Rita Wong 17 March 4:30pm


Save the dates -- we look forward to seeing you there!

Daphne Marlatt Reads 26 March!

We are thrilled to present a surprise addition to our series: the Can Lit legend Daphne Marlatt!

Please join us Thursday 26 March at 7:30 pm in STJ 3014.

The opening act will be Jeremy Fajardo.

This reading is made possible by the St Jerome's English Department and WLU Press. Our grateful thanks to both! 

Photo Credit: Jocelyn Mandryk

Daphne Marlatt was born in Australia and immigrated to Vancouver as a child. She studied English and writing at UBC (BA 1964), where she was a member of the TISH group of young writers. She is known best as a poet (Steveston, Touch to my Tongue) but has also published works of fiction (Ana Historic, Taken), poetics (Readings from the Labyrinth, At the River’s Mouth) and oral history. She has worked extensively as an editor, writer-in-residence, and teacher. In 2006 she was appointed to the Order of Canada, and in 2009 was awarded the Dorothy Livesay Prize for Poetry for The Given. In 2012 she received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. Her recent work includes The Gull, the first Canadian play staged in the tradition of the Noh theatre, awarded the Uchimura Naoya Prize in 2008. Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now revises a 1969-70 series and adds a 2012 series of poems about her home city. Wilfrid Laurier University Press recently released her selected poetry, Rivering, edited by Susan Knutson.

Kim Fu reads at St Jerome's! 12 March

To close off our series on Writing The Self / The Self Writing, we are delighted to welcome Kim Fu.

Please join us Thursday 12 March at 4:30pm in STJ 3014. 

Photo by Inti St. Clair

Kim Fu is the author of the novel FOR TODAY I AM A BOY (2014), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, short-listed for the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award and long-listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. As a journalist and essayist, she has written for the Atlantic, NPR, Maisonneuve, the National Post, Ms., and the Tyee, among others, and her work has been included in Best Canadian Essays. Fu is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s MFA in Creative Writing. She lives in Seattle.

We would like to thank everyone for coming out to all of our readings this season and would especially like to thank the VPAD's office for funding this event!

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.

Shyam Selvadurai reads 15 January!

For our first reading of the new year, we are proud to feature Shyam Selvadurai.

Please join us on 15 January at 8pm in Siegfried Hall.

Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1965. He came to Canada with his family at the age of nineteen. He has studied creative writing and theatre and has a BFA from York University, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia..

Funny Boy (1994), his first novel, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and in the US the Lambda Literary Award. It was also named a Notable Book by the American Library Association, and was translated into 8 languages. His second novel, Cinnamon Gardens, was shortlisted for Canada’s Trillium Award, as well as the Aloa Literary Award in Denmark and the Premio Internazionale Riccardo Bacchelli in Italy. His novel for young adults, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in the US, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award and Silver Winner in the Young Adult Category of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award. Shyam is also the editor of an anthology, Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction, published in Canada and the US. His fourth novel, The Hungry Ghosts (2013) was shortlisted for Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award for Fiction and longlisted for the DSC South Asia Literature Prize. His latest work is a comprehensive anthology of Sri Lankan literature, Many Roads Through Paradise.

Olive Senior reads 20 November!

We are delighted to present the prolific and versatile Olive Senior as the next writer in this year's series, Writing the Self / The Self Writing. 

Please join us Thursday 20 November, 4:30pm, in STJ 3027.

Photo by Caroline Forbes

Olive Senior is the prizewinning author of 14 books of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and children’s literature. She won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (for Summer Lightning) and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry (Over the Roofs of the World). Her other poetry books are Talking of Trees, Gardening in the Tropics (on the syllabus of Caribbean schools) and Shell. Her novel Dancing Lessons was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, was a Globe Best Book and was long listed for the IMPAC Dublin International Prize. Her children’s picture books are Birthday Suit and Anna Carries Water. Her latest work, Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panana Canal has just been released by University of the West Indies Press in the centenary year of the opening of the Panama Canal. She returns to short fiction in 2015 with the release of The Pain Tree by Cormorant Press.

Olive Senior conducts writing workshops internationally and is on the faculty of the Humber School for Writers, Toronto.