Join us for a call to action with Naomi Klein interviewed by Naia Lee & Rebecca Hamilton.

 

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, documentary filmmaker and author of the New York Times and international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, This Changes Everything, No Is Not Enough and On Fire. Her writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world and she is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept. Klein is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University and cofounder of the climate justice organization The Leap.
 

Naia Lee was drawn to climate work through shared visions of a more just world. Currently an organizer with the local and national climate movement, and a gap year student working with Youth Climate Lab, Naia uses her passions for sharing stories and scaling local action to contextualize the need for climate justice.

 

Rebecca Hamilton is an 18-year-old climate justice organizer from Vancouver. She sees the climate justice movement as a journey to create a more just future for all people, and has been involved in the climate strike movement locally and nationally through Sustainabiliteens and Climate Strike Canada. She is interested in collectively exploring how we can live in a way that honours our interconnectedness with each other and the natural world. 

A long-awaited guide to climate action and justice for young readers by bestselling, award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer and climate activist Naomi Klein.

Temperatures are rising all over the world, leading to wildfires, droughts, animal extinctions and ferocious storms -- climate change is real. But how did we get to this state, and what can we do next? What if we could work to protect the planet, while also taking action to make life fairer and more equal for the people who live on it?

We can -- if we're willing to change everything.

 
Join award-winning author Kim Echlin & Kerry Clare for an intimate conversation about Kim's new novel: Speak, Silence.

 

Kim Echlin is the author of Elephant Winter and Dagmar's Daughter, and her third novel, The Disappeared, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction and was published in 20 countries. Her most recent novel Under the Visible Life was critically acclaimed, endorsed by Khaled Hosseini and declared "nothing short of a masterpiece" by Quill & Quire.

Written in Kim Echlin’s masterfully luminescent prose, Speak, Silence weaves together the experiences of a resilient sisterhood and tells the story of the real-life trial that would come to shape history. In a heart-wrenching tale of suffering and loss and a beautiful illustration of power and love, Echlin explores what it means to speak out against the very people who would do anything to silence you.
 

Kerry Clare  is an author, editor and book reviewer. Her first novel, Mitzi Bytes, was called “entertaining, engaging and timely” by the Toronto Star, who also noted that it “heralds the arrival of a fantastic, fun new novelist on the Canadian scene.” She is the editor of The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood, which was published in 2014 to rave reviews, and in 2018 of selected stories for The Journey Prize Stories 30 with Sharon Bala and Zoey Leigh Peterson. A National Magazine Award-nominated essayist, Kerry is also editor of the Canadian books website 49thShelf.com, and writes about books and reading at her popular blog, Pickle Me This.

 
Join us for a thrilling evening with Linwood Barclay interviewed by Brent Butt!

 

Linwood Barclay is the author of eighteen previous novels, and two thrillers for children. A New York Times bestselling author, his books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. He wrote the screenplay adaptation for his novel Never Saw it Coming and his book The Accident has been made into a TV series in France. His novel No Time for Goodbye was a global bestseller. 

“Find You First starts with a bang and ends with an even bigger one.... It’s the best book of his career.”  — Stephen King

Tech millionaire Miles Cookson has more money than he can ever spend, and everything he could dream of—except time. He has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and there is a fifty percent chance that it can be passed on to the next generation. For Miles, this means taking a long hard look at his past...

Two decades ago, a young, struggling Miles was a sperm donor. Somewhere out there, he has kids—nine of them. And they might be about to inherit both the good and the bad from him—maybe his fortune, or maybe something much worse.

As Miles begins to search for the children he’s never known, aspiring film documentarian Chloe Swanson embarks on a quest to find her biological father, armed with the knowledge that twenty-two years ago, her mother used a New York sperm bank to become pregnant.

When Miles and Chloe eventually connect, their excitement at finding each other is overshadowed by a series of mysterious and terrifying events. One by one, Miles’s other potential heirs are vanishing—every trace of them wiped, like they never existed at all.

Who is the vicious killer—another heir methodically erasing rivals? Or is something even more sinister going on?

It’s a deadly race against time...

Brent Butt is a Canadian actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Brent Leroy on the CTV sitcom Corner Gas, which he created. He also created the television series Hiccups and wrote the 2013 film No Clue.

 
Join Hollay Ghadery for a dynamic discussion about her autobiography: Fuse. Hollay will also be discussing a deleted chapter from her book that, in light of the sex-positive movement, she wishes she'd left in.

 

Hollay Ghadery is a writer living in small-town Ontario. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in various literary journals, including The Malahat Review, Room, Grain, and The Fiddlehead. In 2004, she graduated from Queen's University with her BAH in English Literature, and in 2007, she graduated from the University of Guelph with her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She is the recipient of the Constance Rooke Scholarship in Creative Writing, as well as Ontario Arts Council grants for her poetry and non-fiction. Hollay is the force behind River Street Writing—a collective of freelance writers who create exceptional content and provide creative consultancy services for personal and professional projects.

Drawing on her own experiences as a woman of Iranian and British Isle descent, writer Hollay Ghadery dives into conflicts and uncertainty surrounding the bi-racial female body and identity, especially as it butts up against the disparate expectations of each culture. Painfully and at times, reluctantly, Fuse probes and explores the documented prevalence of mental health issues in bi-racial women.
 

A portion of the proceeds from this reading will go toward Durham Region's Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Services to support the recovery of individuals suffering from mental illness.

 
Join us for a night of laughs with Thomas King!

 

Thomas King is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, scriptwriter and photographer. His critically acclaimed, bestselling fiction includes Medicine River; Green Grass, Running Water; One Good Story, That One; Truth and Bright Water; A Short History of Indians in Canada; The Back of the Turtle (winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction); The Inconvenient Indian (winner of the RBC Taylor Prize); Indians on Vacation; the DreadfulWater mystery series; and the poetry collection 77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin. A Member of the Order of Canada and the recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, Thomas King lives in Guelph, Ontario.

Meet Bird and Mimi in this brilliant new novel from one of Canada’s foremost authors. Inspired by a handful of old postcards sent by Uncle Leroy nearly a hundred years earlier, Bird and Mimi attempt to trace Mimi’s long-lost uncle and the family medicine bundle he took with him to Europe.

 “I’m sweaty and sticky. My ears are still popping from the descent into Vaclav Havel. My sinuses ache. My stomach is upset. My mouth is a sewer. I roll over and bury my face in a pillow. Mimi snuggles down beside me with no regard for my distress.

 ‘My god,’ she whispers, ‘can it get any better?’”

By turns witty, sly and poignant, this is the unforgettable tale of one couple’s holiday trip to Europe, where their wanderings through its famous capitals reveal a complicated history, both personal and political.

Shelagh Rogers is a veteran broadcast-journalist, currently host and co-producer of CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, devoted to writing in Canada. She is an honorary witness to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2016, she was awarded the inaugural Margaret Trudeau Award for Mental Health Advocacy. She holds honorary doctorates from eight Canadian universities and is Chancellor of the University of Victoria.

Shelagh is of Métis and Scottish ancestry. Her great-grandmother Edith Rogers was the first Michif woman, and the first woman, elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.