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.

26 October 2019

Deanna Young reads 22 November!

The wonderful poet Deanna Young will be reading for us in November.

Maya Victoria Venters will be the opening act.

 Please join us on Friday 22 November at 4:30pm in SJ1 3027.




 Deanna Young is the author of four books of poetry. House Dreams (2014) was nominated for numerous awards, including the Ottawa Book Award and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Reunion (2018) was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Archibald Lampman Award. Born in Lucan, Ontario, she lives in Ottawa where she works as an editor and teaches poetry privately. In 2019 she was named Ottawa's English Poet Laureate for a two-year term.
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18 October 2019

Susan Holbrook reads 25 October!

We're thrilled to kick off this year's series with Susan Holbrook!

Please join us on Friday 25 October at 4:30pm in SJ1 3027.

photo by Lori Kennedy

Susan Holbrook’s poetry books are the Governor General’s Award-nominated and Trillium Book Award-nominated Throaty Wipes (Coach House 2016), Joy Is So Exhausting (Coach House 2009), which was shortlisted for the Trillium Award for Poetry, and misled (Red Deer 1999), which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award.  She teaches North American literatures and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. With Thomas Dilworth she edited The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation (Oxford U P, 2010). Her textbook How to Read (and Write About) Poetry was released in 2015 (Broadview), and in 2017 she edited Intertidal: The Collected Earlier Poems of Daphne Marlatt (Talonbooks).
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23 September 2019

Our 2019-20 Series


We have a fantastic selection of writers coming to read for us this year!

Susan Holbrook, Friday 25 October, 4:30pm, SJ1 3027

Deanna Young, Friday 22 November, 4:30pm, SJ1 3027

Ben Ladouceur, Friday 24 January, 4:30pm, location tba

And there will be one more event in the Fall: stay tuned!

Hope to see you there. The readings are free and all are welcome!
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10 July 2019

Stay Tuned for our 2019-2020 Series!

We're working on organizing our series for next year, and should be announcing our lineup in August or September. Watch this space!
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02 February 2019

Melanie Fishbane reads 8 March!

To close our series for this year, the wonderful Melanie Fishbane will be reading for us.
The opening act will be Raeesa Ashique.
Please join us on Friday, 8 March at 4:30pm in SJ1 3027.

Photo credit: Ayelet Tsabari
MELANIE J. FISHBANE holds an M.F.A. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an M.A. from Concordia University and teaches English at Humber College. Her YA novel, Maud: A Novel Inspired by the Life of L.M. Montgomery was published in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Vine Awards for the best in Canadian Jewish Literature.
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15 December 2018

Richard Cumyn reads 1 February!


For our first reading for Winter term, we're delighted to welcome Richard Cumyn.
The opening act will be Yutong Wu.
Please join us Friday 1 February at 4:30pm in SJ1 3027.

Photo credit: Andrew Hamilton
RICHARD CUMYN was born in Ottawa and educated at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Widely published as a short-story writer, essayist and book reviewer, he has been the fiction editor of The Antigonish Review, taught at the Maritime Writers Workshop in Fredericton and been Writer-in-Residence at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. He lives in Edmonton.
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23 October 2018

Jael Richardson reads 16 November!

We're delighted to welcome Jael Richardson for our November reading.

The opening act will be Anoja Parameswaran.

Please join us Friday 16 November at 4:30pm in SJ1 3027.

Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. The memoir received a CBC Bookie Award and earned Richardson an Acclaim Award and a My People Award as an Emerging Artist and was adapted into a children’s book in 2016. Her essay “Conception” is part of Room Magazine’s first Women of Colour edition, and excerpts from her first play, my upside down black face, are published in the anthology T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers.
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