Larissa Lai & Rita Wong read 17 March!

We will close this season of the Reading Series with a double serving of reading with Larissa Lai and Rita Wong! Please join us on 17 March at 4:30 pm in STJ 2009. 


Make that a triple serving: the icing on the cake will be opening act Rameesha Qasi.

Larissa Lai is the author of two novels, When Fox Is a Thousand and Salt Fish Girl; two books of poetry, sybil unrest (with Rita Wong) and Automaton Biographies; a chapbook, Eggs in the Basement; and most recently, a critical book, Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. A recipient of the Astraea Foundation Emerging Writers' Award, she has been shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Tiptree Award, the Sunburst Award, the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award, the bpNichol Chapbook Award and the Dorothy Livesay Prize. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary and directs The Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing there.

To find out more information about Larissa please see her website!

Rita Wong is the author of four books of poetry: undercurrent (forthcoming in 2015 with Nightwood), sybil unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai, Line Books 2008), forage (Nightwood 2007), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang 1998). forage won Canada Reads Poetry 2011. Wong received the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writer Award in 1997, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2008.  She is currently researching the poetics of water. Her work investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology, and decolonization.

To find out more information about Rita please see her website!

Thank you for attending the Reading Series this season and we look forward to returning with a new series in Fall 2016! 

Catherine Greenwood Reads 10 March!

Please join us on Thursday March 10 at 4:30 pm in STJ 2009.

The opening act will be Menaka Shanmuganantha.

Catherine Greenwood's poetry and fiction has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, and her poems have won several prizes, including The Banff Centre’s Bliss Carman Award and a National Magazine Gold Award. Her first book, The Pearl King and Other Poems, based upon the life of the inventor of the cultured pearl, was a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book. The Lost Letters was shortlisted for BC’s Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, The City of Victoria’s Butler Book Prize, and the Relit Awards. Catherine lives in Victoria, BC, where she currently works for the Ministry of Justice.

Catherine Hunter reads 26 February

We are excited to continue our Reading Series with Catherine Hunter! 

Please join us on Friday 26 February at 4:30 in STJ 3027. 
This event is hosted in collaboration with the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. 

Also reading for us as an opening act will be Ayesha Imran. 

Catherine Hunter is a poet and novelist who teaches Creative Writing at the University of Winnipeg. Her previous books include the poetry collection Latent Heat (Manitoba book of the year, 1997) and the crime novel Queen of Diamonds. Catherine’s new novel, After Light, spans four generations of an Irish-American-Canadian family in an exploration of love, war, trauma, and the power of art.

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!