If you love meeting talented writers and hearing them read from their published work, or just want to soak up a unique cultural experience, don’t miss the opportunity to attend the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series.
The series gives attendees an opportunity to get up close and personal with an eclectic group of 11 authors while having the unique opportunity to engage with them in a dialogue about their work.
Canadian Writers in Person is a for-credit course for students. It is also a free-admission event for members of the public. All readings take place at 7 p.m. on select Tuesday evenings via Zoom. Links for each reading can be found here: https://cltr.huma.laps.yorku.ca/canwrite/.
This year’s lineup consists of a unique selection of emerging and established Canadian writers, whose writing explores a broad range of topics and geographical and cultural landscapes. Featuring seasoned and emerging poets and fiction writers, the series highlights Canada’s ever-growing literary talent.
The series will continue on Nov. 24 with a reading of Megan Gail Coles’ Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club (House of Anansi Press).
Coles is a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland and the National Theatre School of Canada and has recently completed a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. She has written and produced numerous plays. Her first fiction collection, Eating Habits of the Chronically Lonesome, won the BMO Winterset Award, the ReLit Award and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and it earned her the one-time Writers’ Trust 5×5 prize. Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club, her debut novel, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Originally from Savage Cove on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, Coles currently resides in Montreal, where she is a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University.
In Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club, another blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off downtown St. John’s, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction and hurt is breaking overhead. Iris, a young hostess from around the bay, is forced to pull a double despite resolving to avoid the charming chef and his wealthy restaurateur wife. Just tables over, Damian, a hungover and self-loathing server, is trying to navigate a potential punch-up with a pair of lit customers who remain oblivious to the rising temperature in the dining room. Meanwhile Olive, a young woman far from her northern home, watches it all unfurl from the fast and frozen street. Through rolling blackouts, we glimpse the truth behind the shroud of scathing lies and unrelenting abuse, and discover that resilience proves most enduring in the dead of this winter’s tale.
Other presentations scheduled in this series are:
- Dec. 8: Sharon Butala, Season of Fury and Wonder (Coteau Books)
2021
- Jan. 19: Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Bone Black (Nightwood Editions)
- Feb. 2: S.D. Chrostowska, The Eyelid (Coach House Books)
- Feb. 23: Kaie Kellough, Dominoes at the Crossroads (Vehicule Press)
- March 9: Terry Watada, Mysterious Dreams of the Dead (Anvil Press)
- March 23: Cecily Nicholson, Wayside Sang (Talonbooks)
Canadian Writers in Person (AP/CLTR 1953 6.0A) is a course offered in the Culture & Expression program in the Department of Humanities in York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. For more information on the series, visit yorku.ca/laps/canwrite, or email Professor Gail Vanstone at gailv@yorku.ca or Professor Leslie Sanders at leslie@yorku.ca.