Events

Caroline Adderson at Winnipeg Thin Air Festival: Afternoon Book Chat

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Join Caroline Adderson, author of the Giller-longlisted collection A Way to Be Happy (Sep 10, 2024) at the Winnipeg Thin Air Festival! Caroline will be joined by fellow author Shashi Bhat for an afternoon book chat, discussing and reading from their recent releases.

The event will take place at the Bill & Helen Norrie Library on Wednesday, September 25 at 1:30PM. Books will be available for sale and signing.

More details here.

Grab A Way to Be Happy here!

ABOUT A WAY TO BE HAPPY

Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize

Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.

ABOUT CAROLINE ADDERSON

Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels (A Russian Sister, Ellen in Pieces, The Sky Is Falling, Sitting Practice, and A History of Forgetting), two previous collections of short stories (Pleased to Meet You and Bad Imaginings), as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.

Caroline Adderson at Winnipeg Thin Air Festival: Main Stage

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Join Caroline Adderson, author of A Way to Be Happy (Sep 10, 2024) at the Winnipeg Thin Air Festival! Caroline will be appearing for the “Reading on the Main Stage” event in the evening to read from her latest short story collection, the Giller-longlisted A Way to Be Happy. She’ll be joined by E. McGregor, Oonya Kempadoo, and Shashi Bhat, as each of these award-winning writers read from books that confront the difficulty of relationships, their stories often offering us templates for braving these onerous but regular realities of life. Books will be available for sale and signing.

The event will take place at the WAG, on Wednesday, September 25 at 7PM.

More details here.

Grab A Way to Be Happy here!

ABOUT A WAY TO BE HAPPY

Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize

Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.

ABOUT CAROLINE ADDERSON

Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels (A Russian Sister, Ellen in Pieces, The Sky Is Falling, Sitting Practice, and A History of Forgetting), two previous collections of short stories (Pleased to Meet You and Bad Imaginings), as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.

Mike Barnes at Word on the Street Toronto

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Mike Barnes, author of Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country, will be at Word on the Street Toronto on Saturday, September 28. Time and more details TBA.

Grab a copy of Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country here!

ABOUT SLEEP IS NOW A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Finalist for the 2024 Trillium Book Award • One of CBC Books’ Canadian Nonfiction to Read in the Fall

A poet recounts his experience with madness and explores the relationship between apprehension and imagination.

In the summer of 1977, standing on a roadside somewhere between Dachau and Munich, twenty-two-year-old Mike Barnes experienced the dawning of the psychic break he’d been anticipating almost all his life. “Times over the years when I have tried to describe what followed,” he writes of that moment, “it has always come out wrong.” In this finely wrought, deeply intelligent memoir of madness, its antecedents and its aftermath, Barnes reconstructs instead what led him to that moment and offers with his characteristic generosity and candor the captivating account of a mind restlessly aware of itself.

ABOUT MIKE BARNES

Mike Barnes is the author of twelve books of poetry, short fiction, novels, and memoir. He has won the Danuta Gleed Award and a National Magazine Award Silver Medal for his short fiction, and the Edna Staebler Award for his photo-and-text essay “Asylum Walk.” His most recent book of nonfiction, Be With: Letters to a Caregiver, was a finalist for the City of Toronto Book Award and has been praised by Margaret Atwood as “Timely, lyrical, tough, accurate.” He lives in Toronto.

Caroline Adderson at WORD Vancouver

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Join Caroline Adderson, author of Giller-longlisted A Way to Be Happy (Sep 10, 2024) at WORD Vancouver for the panel “Short Stories Exploding Pages”! Caroline will be joined by fellow writer Shashi Bhat for a conversation on short story craft, moderated by Taslim Jaffer.

The event will take place on Saturday, September 28 at 3:45PM.

More details here.

Grab A Way to Be Happy here!

ABOUT A WAY TO BE HAPPY

Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize

Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.

ABOUT CAROLINE ADDERSON

Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels (A Russian Sister, Ellen in Pieces, The Sky Is Falling, Sitting Practice, and A History of Forgetting), two previous collections of short stories (Pleased to Meet You and Bad Imaginings), as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.

Alex Pugsley at TIFA

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Join Alex Pugsley, author of The Education of Aubrey McKee (May 7, 2024), at the Toronto International Festival of Authors! Alex will be in conversation with Jean Marc Ah-Sen to talk about writing books about writers falling in love with other writers and the emotional turmoil that comes from it. With both novels set in the Toronto literary scene, the authors will have plenty to talk about how the city is central to their inspirations. The conversation will be moderated by Tomas Hachard, and supported by Toronto Lit Up. Books will be available for sale and signing afterwards.

The event will take place at the Lakeside Terrace on Sunday, September 29 at 1PM.

Tickets and more details here.

Grab The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Check out the first book, Aubrey McKee, here!

ABOUT THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

Longlisted for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards • A Toronto Star Most Anticipated Spring Title • A 49th Shelf Can’t Miss Title for Spring

A young writer finds his way in and out of love in the late twentieth century.

The scene is Toronto, the early 1990s, and at a house party Aubrey McKee falls in love with a bewitching stranger who talks him into stealing a piece of cake. This woman—a poet named Gudrun Peel—rapidly becomes the person for whom he would do anything at all. Together, Aubrey and Gudrun make a life of delirious idiosyncrasy. Surrounded by friends, frenemies, lovers, and rivals in the underground arts scene, the possibilities of their destiny remain radically open. But as their relationship deepens, and their creative and professional lives stumble, stall, and then suddenly blow up, Aubrey and Gudrun struggle against their own inexperience . . . as well as each other.

The much-anticipated follow-up to Alex Pugsley’s Aubrey McKee, The Education of Aubrey McKee is a campus novel in which the city of Toronto is the institute of higher education and the setting for a glittering story about the incandescence of first love.

ABOUT ALEX PUGSLEY

Alex Pugsley is the author of the novels Aubrey McKee and The Education of Aubrey McKee, as well as the short story collection Shimmer. Following the publication of Aubrey McKee, he was named one of CBC’s Writers to Watch. He has been nominated for Canadian Comedy Awards, Gemini Awards, Hot Doc Awards, National Magazine Awards, and is a winner of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize. His feature film Dirty Singles is available on Apple TV and Prime Video. His next novel, Silver Lake, the third book in a series about Aubrey McKee, is forthcoming from Biblioasis.

Colleen Coco Collins at Word on the Street Toronto

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Join Colleen Coco Collins, author of the poetry collection Sorry About the Fire (Apr 4, 2024), at Word on the Street Toronto! Coco will be on the panel “#ActuallyAutistic: Neurodivergent Storytelling” alongside fellow authors Maggie North and Paige Layle, with moderator Kerry C. Byrne, as they explore how their neurodivergence influences the way they tell stories, and what fresh perspectives autistic minds bring to writers’ craft.

The event will take place on Sunday, September 29 at 2:45PM.

More details here.

Grab a copy of Sorry About the Fire here!

ABOUT SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE

A CBC Books’ Poetry Collection to Watch for in Spring 2024

I wanted a good bewildering, / down deep, / as the keep of a castle.

With a voice as ungovernable and determined as Prometheus—who stole fire from Zeus only to face dire consequences—Colleen Coco Collins’ debut poems are daring dispatches from beyond the margins: light-filled flares sent up from the edge of language, sentience, land, and story. Drawing on all of her multidisciplinary enamorations and rendered through the triple vision of her Irish, French, and Odawa heritage, Sorry About the Fire introduces not just a poet, but a stunningly original sensibility.

ABOUT COLLEEN COCO COLLINS

Colleen Coco Collins [she/they] is an interdisciplinary artist of Irish, French, and Odawa descent, working in songwriting, performance, poetry and visual arts. She’s worked as a gallery director, in forestry, fossil preparation, and renovation; as an autism support worker, teacher, and women’s shelter counsellor. Her writing, music, and art practice centers on temporality, presumptions of sentience, subversion, rhythm, gesture, geographies, biophonies, frequencies, the ouroboric, the peripatetic, love and the polyglottic. Hailing from Antler River/Deshkan Ziibiing/London, Ontario, Coco has studied at universities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New Zealand, and Ireland. She lives litorally in rural Port Greville, Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia amidst crows, coyotes, grackles, bees, humpback, lichen and fox.

Richard Kelly Kemick at Calgary Wordfest: Turtle Island Reads

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Richard Kelly Kemick, author of Hello, Horse (Aug 6, 2024), will be appearing at the Calgary Wordfest’s Imaginairium Festival’s event, “Turtle Island Reads.” Richard will be joined by a number of fellow writers, including Carleigh Baker, Shashi Bhat, Fanny Britt,  Sig Burwash, and Conor Kerr. At turns edgy, humorous, experimental, complex, and raw, the tales told by these cross-country stars of contemporary Canadian storytelling speak to our longing for community and connection. Books will be made available for purchase by Owl’s Nest Books.

The event will take place on Thursday, October 17 at 7:30PM.

Tickets and more details here.

Grab Hello, Horse here!

ABOUT HELLO, HORSE

Taut, stylish stories take on big moral questions from surprising perspectives.

A teenager’s job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother’s death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War.

Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make—for better and for worse.

ABOUT RICHARD KELLY KEMICK

Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod (also on audiobook), which takes readers undercover at one of the world’s largest religious events, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. He is the recipient of multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s 2019 Award for Best Short Story. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Michael Lista at Calgary Wordfest: Poetry Cabaret

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Michael Lista, author of poetry collection Barfly (June 6, 2024) will be at the Calgary Wordfest’s Imaginairium Festival’s “Poetry Cabaret”! Michael will be joined by fellow poets Conor Kerr, Canisia Lubrin, and Benjamin Hertwig on stage to regale the audience in verse with readings and short interviews. Join them to fill your Friday night with a figurative (and perhaps a literal) cocktail of the poetic joy and wonder within us all. Books will be made available for sale and signing by Owl’s Nest Books.

The event will take place on Friday, October 18 at 7:30PM.

Tickets and more details here.

Grab Barfly here!

ABOUT BARFLY

A CBC Books’ Poetry Collection to Watch for in Spring 2024 • A Toronto Star Most Anticipated Spring Title

We’re in love, but we’re still Millennials. / What’s wrong with our hearts is congenital. 

In Barfly, the poet comes back to haunt himself, and us. In this incomparable third collection, his first in a decade, Michael Lista returns to reinvent poetry with humour, pugnacity, and a deeply singular voice. Splicing Byronic rhymes and Auden’s meters with the twenty-first century irreverence of a late-stage Twitter feed, the poems in Barfly are alternatingly aggressive, sweet, deadly, and raw with a break-your-heart vulnerability.

ABOUT MICHAEL LISTA

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet. He has worked as a book columnist for the National Post and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of four books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough; Strike Anywhere, a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture; and The Human Scale: Murder, Mischief and Other Selected Mayhems, a book of longform journalism. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Walrus, Canadaland, and Toronto Life. He is a contributing editor at Toronto Life and Maclean’s. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University and the winner of the 2020 National Magazine Awards for both Investigative Reporting and Long Form Feature Writing. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey into a television series for Apple TV+.

Michael Lista at Calgary Wordfest: Rocking the Boat

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Michael Lista, author of poetry collection Barfly (June 6, 2024) will be at the Calgary Wordfest’s Imaginairium Festival’s event, “Rocking the Boat.” Michael will join authors Catherine Hernandez and Danny Ramadan for a conversation hosted by Zain Velji about what it costs—professionally and personally—when you decide to make waves. Art cannot be separated from human rights, facts, and social justice. These writers have stood unwavering in their convictions and desires to create a more equitable, transparent, and empathetic world, often placing themselves in opposition to the status quo, whether literary, political, or societal. Books will be made available for sale and signing by Owl’s Nest Books.

The event will take place on Saturday, October 19 at 1PM.

Tickets and more details here.

Grab Barfly here!

ABOUT BARFLY

A CBC Books’ Poetry Collection to Watch for in Spring 2024 • A Toronto Star Most Anticipated Spring Title

We’re in love, but we’re still Millennials. / What’s wrong with our hearts is congenital. 

In Barfly, the poet comes back to haunt himself, and us. In this incomparable third collection, his first in a decade, Michael Lista returns to reinvent poetry with humour, pugnacity, and a deeply singular voice. Splicing Byronic rhymes and Auden’s meters with the twenty-first century irreverence of a late-stage Twitter feed, the poems in Barfly are alternatingly aggressive, sweet, deadly, and raw with a break-your-heart vulnerability.

ABOUT MICHAEL LISTA

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet. He has worked as a book columnist for the National Post and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of four books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough; Strike Anywhere, a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture; and The Human Scale: Murder, Mischief and Other Selected Mayhems, a book of longform journalism. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Walrus, Canadaland, and Toronto Life. He is a contributing editor at Toronto Life and Maclean’s. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University and the winner of the 2020 National Magazine Awards for both Investigative Reporting and Long Form Feature Writing. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey into a television series for Apple TV+.

Richard Kelly Kemick at Calgary Wordfest: The Way We… Wear

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Richard Kelly Kemick, author of Hello, Horse (Aug 6, 2024), will be appearing at the Calgary Wordfest’s Imaginairium Festival’s event, “The Way We… Wear.” Richard will be joined by fellow writers Anne Enright, Holly Gramazio, Jenny Heijun Wills, Sarah Leavitt, Canisia Lubrin, Marissa Stapley, and Tanya Talaga. The eight writers tell a story about a piece of clothing that became more than just a garment. A lucky left sock? A silk kimono dug up from the bottom of a vintage trunk? The horrible dress your father made you wear to school? The beauty of The Way We… is that we can’t possibly predict what you’ll hear, but we *can* predict you’ll be telling your friends, “You had to be there!” Books will be made available for sale and signing by Owl’s Nest Books.

The event will take place on Saturday, October 19 at 7:30PM.

Tickets and more details here.

Grab Hello, Horse here!

ABOUT HELLO, HORSE

Taut, stylish stories take on big moral questions from surprising perspectives.

A teenager’s job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother’s death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War.

Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make—for better and for worse.

ABOUT RICHARD KELLY KEMICK

Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod (also on audiobook), which takes readers undercover at one of the world’s largest religious events, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. He is the recipient of multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s 2019 Award for Best Short Story. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.