The Department of English Literature is delighted to announce the latest season of the Writers Reading Series in Peterborough. These events bring award-winning and world-class authors to Peterborough for literary readings, critical/practical discussions and plain old casual conversation. As befits the range and scope of Canada’s literary landscape, our authors cover a lot of emotional and intellectual ground. These are smart people with serious talent, but the events are stimulating and funny, not stodgy and solemn. Because we choose writers for their unique talents no two events are exactly alike, but they’re all free and they’re all fun.
Unless otherwise noted, all events begin at 7:00 PM in the Junior Common Room (Scott House) at Traill College, 310 London Street, Peterborough, with a public reception in The Trend Pub immediately afterwards. We invite all members of the community to take advantage of this opportunity to see, hear, and meet these writers in relaxed and hospitable circumstances.
A Brief Overview…
2015 marks the 27th year of the Peterborough series and features eight readings by energized, acclaimed and emerging authors, representing a variety of viewpoints and sensibilities. We hope to have touched upon the vastness and diversity of Canada’s literary traditions and aspirations, entertaining writers from Newfoundland to British Columbia. The intellectual and emotional territory covered by this year’s lineup is vast, and includes stops in, among other places, Siberian gulags, war-torn Yugoslavia, the killing fields of the Great War, Toronto gambling dens, airports, truckstops and, of course, Twitter.
This year, we feel like we have a list that includes some of Canada’s most interesting emerging writers in Rob Winger and Sachiko Murakami, one of its most important and influential “elders” in Frances Itani and that Michael Crummey, Robyn Sarah and Steven Galloway are established writers at the peak of their careers (Let the record show that we invited Sean Michaels in advance of his “surprise” Giller win).
The idea every year is to get this kind of a mix, but it’s worked out especially well this time around.
In presenting emerging and established talent, we have built our series audience to previously unimaginable levels. The audience continues to grow, and there’s a feeling now that people trust us, that they’re willing to come out even when they aren’t familiar with a particular writer. A sense of identity and community is forming around this series and people now come to explore as much as to confirm, which is a very good thing. We believe we’re validating the work of young artists by placing them in the company of those with greater visibility and integrating a dynamic literary discourse into the wider Peterborough community.
September 15th
Michael Crummey's latest novel, Sweetland, was a National Bestseller and won the CBC Bookie Award for Fiction. His previous novel, Galore, won the Canadian Authors' Association Fiction Award, the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean Region), and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Governor-General's Award. He has published two other novels, River Thieves and The Wreckage, as well as poetry and short stories. His work has appeared in the Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories and in The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry. He lives in St. John's.
October 1st
Rob Winger is the author of three collections of poetry: Old Hat (Nightwood 2014), The Chimney Stone (Nightwood 2010), and Muybridge’s Horse (Nightwood 2007). Muybridge’s Horse won the CBC Literary Award for poetry and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award.
October 15th
Sean Michaels was born in Stirling, Scotland, in 1982. Raised in Ottawa, he eventually settled in Montreal, founding Said the Gramophone, one of the earliest music blogs. He has since spent time in Edinburgh and Kraków, written for the Guardian and McSweeney's, toured with rock bands, searched the Parisian catacombs for Les UX, and received two National Magazine Awards. His first novel, Us Conductors (Penguin, 2014) won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize and the inaugural Kirkus Prize for Fiction.
October 21st
Bob Bossin is a founding member of long-lived Canadian folk group, Stringband. Three collections of his music are currently in print. Bob has also written non-fiction, including the book Settling Clayoquot (1981), and the play Bossin’s Home Remedy for Nuclear War (1986). He has been nominated for a national magazine award, and his short story, “Latkes,” won 2nd prize in the Antigonish Review’s fiction competition. His latest book, Davy the Punk (Porcupine’s Quill, 2014) chronicles his father’s life in Toronto’s gambling underground in the 1930s and 40s.
November 3rd
Frances Itani is the internationally known author of 16 books, including her novel Tell (Harper Collins, 2014), shortlisted for the 2014 Giller Prize. She has won many awards including 3 CBC Literary Awards, a Commonwealth Prize for best book for her novel, Deafening (Phyllis Bruce, 2004), and the CAA Jubilee Award for best book of short stories. She was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the William Saroyan International Literary Award and again for the Commonwealth Award for her novel Remembering the Bones (Phyllis Bruce, 2008). The Washington Post named her novel Requiem one of the top fiction titles in the U.S. for 2012. Her work has been published in 17 countries. She is a Member of the Order of Canada, has lived in many countries, has taught extensively and has been involved in humanitarian work all her life. Frances currently lives in Ottawa.
November 10th
Robyn Sarah was born in New York to Canadian parents and grew up in Montreal, where she still lives. A poet, writer, literary editor, and musician, she is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently My Shoes Are Killing Me (Biblioasis, 2015) as well as two collections of short stories and a book of essays on poetry. Her poems have been broadcast by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English (2009 and 2010), The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology (UK). She is currently poetry editor for Cormorant Books in Ontario.
November 17th
Steven Galloway is the author of Finnie Walsh (2000), Ascension (2004), The Cellist of Sarajevo (Vintage, 2009), and The Confabulist (Knopf 2014). He has won the Borders Original Voice Award, the OLA Evergreen Award, and the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, and been nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Richard & Judy Book of the Year Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Award, and the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. His work has been published in over thirty countries and optioned for film.
November 24th
Sachiko Murakami is the author of The Invisibility Exhibit (Talon 2008) and Rebuild (Talon 2011). Her latest writing project is Get Me Out of Here, poems that respond to an open Internet call for observations in airports. She has been a literary worker for numerous presses, journals, and organizations, including Matrix, EVENT, The Capilano Review, Summer Literary Seminars, and Snare Books. She has served as a juror for numerous literary prizes and competitions. The Invisibility Exhibit was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.