2021 Winter Reading Pass 
Your $85 (+ HST) pass includes 3 signed books and an exclusive Zoom invitation for each event.  The perfect gift for the booklover on your list.  Or maybe just for you!

 

2021 Winter Pass 
ZOOM EVENT
Your $30 ticket includes a signed copy of the book and an exclusive Zoom invitation.
 

This year's Giller winner interviewed by Governor General's Award nominee Rob Winger - a perfect set-up for an all-star event.

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four acclaimed poetry books, and the short story collection How To Pronounce Knife, winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller prize, a New York Times Editors' Choice and a TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2020. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, NOON, Journey Prize Stories 2016, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, O. Henry Prize Stories 2019, and Best Canadian Stories 2020. She was born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, and was raised and educated in Toronto where she now lives.

"She's the kind of writer who conceals how technically brilliant she is. Her economy is astonishing--you feel yourself to be in the presence of someone who will not waste a second of your time, who will tell you exactly what you need to know, and who will only tell you the truth."-Kate Cayley, The New Quarterly

"Souvankham Thammavongsa writes with deep precision, wide-open spaces, and quiet, cool, emotionally devastating poise. There is not a moment off in these affecting stories."-Sheila Heti

 

2021 Winter Pass 
ZOOM EVENT
Your $30 ticket includes a signed copy of the book and an exclusive Zoom invitation
 

FRANCES ITANI  eighteen novels include That’s My Baby; Tell, shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Requiem, chosen by the Washington Post as one of the top fiction titles of 2012; Remembering the Bones, published internationally and shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; and the #1 bestseller Deafening, which won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Published in seventeen territories, Deafening was also selected for CBC’s Canada Reads. A three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prize, Frances Itani is a Member of the Order of Canada and the recipient of a 2019 Library and Archives Canada Scholars Award. She lives in Ottawa.

On Tuesday nights in the backroom of Cassie’s café, six strangers seek solace and find themselves part of a “Company of Good Cheer”

These six strangers are learning that beginnings can be possible at any stage of life. But as they tell their stories, they must navigate what is shared and what is withheld. Which version of the truth will be revealed? Who is prepared to step up when help is needed? This moving, funny and deeply empathic new novel from acclaimed author Frances Itani reminds us that life, with all its twists and turns, never loses its capacity to surprise.

Seasoned interviewer Wendy O'Brien will explore the nuances of The Company We Keep and offer perspective and insight in her interview with Frances.