Robert Paul Weston reads March 27!

A bonus reading for this Winter term -- Robert Paul Weston, a YA author whose novel Dust City has been described as "Chinatown via the Brothers Grimm", while Zorgamazoo "is about saving the universe from boredom. And it rhymes -- all 280 pages worth". 


Join us Tuesday 27 March 4:30pm in STJ 2009. The reading is free and all are welcome, so please spread the word!

Robert Paul Weston's first novel, Zorgamazoo, is the winner of the 2011 California Young Reader Medal, the 2010 Silver Birch Award, the 2009 Children’s Choice Award, and a 2009 E.B. White Honour. The film rights to the book have been optioned by the producer of Shrek. His second novel, Dust City, was shortlisted for the 2011 Edgar Alan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the 2011 Sunburst Award for Canadian Fantasy, and the 2012 Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award; it was also named a 2011 Honour Book by the Canadian Library Association. Currently, Weston lives in Toronto, where he lectures in creative writing at U of T.


Check out his website at www.robertpaulweston.com.

Julia McCarthy reads 8 March!

Poet Julia McCarthy will be visiting us on Thursday, 8 March, at 4:30pm in STJ 3014. Please come out for another great reading in this year's series!


Julia McCarthy is originally from Toronto. She spent ten years living in the United States, most notably Alaska and Georgia. She has also lived in Norway and spent significant time in South Africa. She has recently published Return from Erebus with Brick Books; it is the recipient of the Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry. Her previous collection of poetry, Stormthrower, was published by Wolsak and Wynn in 2002. She now resides in Nova Scotia where she works as a freelance editor. And she is a St. Jerome's alumna!


We're delighted to be working once again with Brick Books to make this reading happen, and grateful for their support, along with the generosity of the Canada Council for the Arts, and the St. Jerome's English Department.

Fred Wah reads at Guelph, 15 March

Fred Wah, newly appointed Poet Laureate of Canada (Congratulations, Fred!!), will be appearing at the TransCanada Institute, University of Guelph, on Thursday 15 March, 11:30-12:30.

Not too long ago, he gave a memorably fantastic reading at St. Jerome's. If you can go to this one, you're in for a treat!

For more information, and to register (registration is required), go to this page, all about the event, at the TransCanada Institute.

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.