Steve Noyes reads 11 February!

Welcome back to the winter installation of the Reading Series! We're continuing our theme of Alternate Realities this term beginning with Steve Noyes. 

Please join us on 11 February at 4:30 in STJ 2009.

Steve Noyes is from Winnipeg and was educated at Carleton University's School of Journalism and UBC's MFA program. Over the years he has worked at many jobs, including editor, parking lot attendant, printing press grunt and disabilities advocate. More recently, he has taught English in Chinese universities several times and spent more than a decade as a policy analyst in the BC Ministry of Health.

Steve has published nine books of fiction and poetry, and more than a hundred journal publications in Canadian literary magazines and newspapers. His most recent poetry collections are small data (Frog Hollow Press) and Rainbow Stage-Manchuria (Oolichan Books). His first novel, It is just that your house is so far away (Signature Editions), prompted reviewers to call it "a portrait of China that is honest, intimate and layered" and "a wonderful book." He has recently published a second novel, November's Radio (Oolichan Books).

These days, Steve divides his time between Victoria, where he lives with his wife, the poet Catherine Greenwood, and Canterbury, England, where is he pursuing a PhD in Writing at the University of Kent.

To find out more about Steve, please visit his website.

Amanda Leduc & Elisabeth de Mariaffi read 19 & 20 November!

Our next two visiting writers are Amanda Leduc & Elisabeth de Mariaffi!

Please join us on 19 November at 4:30 pm, STJ 3014 to welcome Amanda Leduc. 

Amanda Leduc's essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia and been shortlisted for a number of awards, among them the 2014 CBC Canada Writes Fiction and Non Fiction Contests, the 2012 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, and the 2012 PRISM International Short Fiction Contest. Her novel, The Miracles of Ordinary Men, was published in 2013 by Toronto's ECW Press and shortlisted for the 2014 ReLit award. She currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where she is at work on her next novel.

Check her out at: https://twitter.com/AmandaLeduc

Opening for Amanda Leduc: Catherine Vendryes.

Please join us on 20 November at 4:30 pm, STJ 3027 to welcome Elisabeth de Mariaffi. In collaboration with Wilfred Laurier University English Department. 

Elisabeth de Mariaffi is the Giller Prize-nominated author of one book of short stories, How To Get Along With Women (Invisible Publishing, 2012) and the new novel, The Devil You Know (HarperCollins, Canada; Simon & Schuster USA 2015). Her poetry and short fiction have been widely published in magazines across Canada. In 2013, her story “Kiss Me Like I’m the Last Man on Earth” (published in The New Quarterly) was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award. Elisabeth now makes her home in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where she lives with the poet George Murray, their combined four children and a border collie — making them CanLit’s answer to the Brady Brunch.

Check her out at: http://elisabethdemariaffi.com/

Opening for Elisabeth de Mariaffi: Erin Taylor.

For our exciting Winter 2016 lineup, please see our 2015-16 schedule page!

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.