Writers Festival Radio

The final podcast of our 6-Part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth's decreasing habitability. Jenalee Kluttz, Ph.D. An educator-activist and community organizer, Jenalee is passionate about climate and ecological justice. She brings this passion into her work at the University of British Columbia where she researches social movements for climate and environmental justice, the learning that takes place in and through social action, as well as education for sustainability more broadly. At the center of her work is the recognition that she lives as a settler on lands that are the traditional, unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, and thus much of her research and writing focuses on decolonizing climate action.

Part 5 of our 6- part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth's decreasing habitability. Dr. Michelle Lam is the Director of the Centre for Aboriginal and Rural Education Studies (CARES), an applied research institute in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University. Prior to entering academia, she was an English as an Additional Language teacher in Canada and abroad. She is interested in newcomer settlement, education for anti-racism, and rural equity.

Part 4 of our 6-Part series; Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth's decreasing habitability. Dr. Candy Jones is currently an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at Brandon University. Her research interests include rural education and capacity building, teacher professional development (particularly in rural contexts), mathematics education, and teacher identity. A career-long teacher and scholar in the field of rural education, Dr. Jones spent 20 years as secondary educator in three different rural Manitoba communities before moving to Brandon University in 2015. She is both passionate about the strength and beauty of rural spaces, and a staunch advocate for those who live and work within them.

Part 3 of our 6-Part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth's decreasing habitability. Maria Vamvalis is currently a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum and Pedagogy program in the department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her research focuses on climate justice education that nurtures meaning, purpose and hope in learners. She has been an educator in the public school system in Ontario and has worked for many years as a facilitator of teacher professional learning and as a curriculum consultant. She has participated in diverse educational projects and has been deeply committed to reflexive practices within education. She is currently an instructor in the Master of Teaching program at OISE, University of Toronto.

Part 2 of our 6-Part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth's decreasing habitability. Dr. Alysha Farrell is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University. She is passionate about fostering a caring ecology in the study of education. Her research focuses on teaching, leading, and learning in the face of the climate crisis. Using arts-based methods like playwriting, forum theatre, narrative photography, and poetic inquiry, she collaborates with others to tell stories that will stick to your bones. Her recent research-art exhibition at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba was called Before I Go to Bed Tonight. The exhibition featured the work of 17 young artists who delved into the personal and collective impacts of climate change. Alysha is the author of two books, Exploring the Affective Dimensions of Educational Leadership (2020) and Ecosophy and Educational Research for the Anthropocene (2022). She co-edited a third book called, Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the Face of Environmental Crisis that was released in July 2022. She has presented at several national and international conferences on topics such as using arts-based approaches to better understand the emotional dimensions of climate change education and eco-orientations to pedagogy.

Part 1 of our 6-Part Series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth's decreasing habitability. Stan Wilson has a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is an Elder of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. Stan has experience teaching at all levels of education including primary, elementary, and high school both in the public system and at the First Nation's level. He has been a school board member, a member of the Board of Regents for the University of Winnipeg, a school principal, superintendent of education, consultant to provincial Departments of Education in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and a dean of Education for the University College of the North. Stan is a co-founder of the First Nations Graduate Education Program at the University of Alberta and is now working with a team of international Indigenous scholars to develop an international doctoral program.

Steven W, Beattie sits down with renowned author and journalist John Lorinc to discuss his Balsillie Prize-winning book Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias. Is the ‘smart city' the utopia we've been waiting for? The promise of the so-called smart city has been at the forefront of urban planning and development since the early 2010s, and the tech industry that supplies smart city software and hardware is now worth hundreds of billions a year. But the ideas and approaches underpinning smart city tech raise tough and important questions about the future of urban communities, surveillance, automation, and public participation. The smart city era, moreover, belongs firmly in a longer historical narrative about cities ? one defined by utopian ideologies, architectural visions, and technological fantasies. Smart streetlights, water and air quality tracking, autonomous vehicles: with examples from all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Portland, and Chicago, Dream States unpacks the world of smart city tech, but also situates this important shift in city-building into a broader story about why we still dream about perfect places. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

Join us for a conversation between poet and editor Ellen Chang-Richardson and writer and visual artist Manahil Bandukwala about her poetry collection, MONUMENT . MONUMENT is a conversation with Mughal Empress Mumtaz Mahal, which moves her legacy beyond the Taj Mahal. MONUMENT upturns notions of love, monumentalisation, and empire by exploring buried facets of Mumtaz Mahal's story. The collection layers linear time and geographical space to chart the continuing presence of historical legacies. It considers what alternate futures could have been possible. Who are we when we continue to make the same mistakes? Beyond distance, time, and boundaries, what do we still carry? The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

CBC's Laurence Wall leads the conversation with Canada's top war historian, Tim Cook, about his latest publication, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers: Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War . Lifesavers and Body Snatchers is a definitive medical history of the Great War, illuminating how the carnage of modern battle gave birth to revolutionary life-saving innovations. It brings to light shocking revelations of the ways the brutality of combat and the necessity of agonizing battlefield decisions led to unimaginable strain for men and women of medicine who fought to save the lives of soldiers. Medical care in almost all armies during the Great War, and especially in the Canadian medical services, was sophisticated and constantly evolving. Vastly more wounded soldiers were saved than lost. Doctors and surgeons prevented disease from decimating armies, confronted ghastly wounds from chemical weap-ons, remade shattered bodies, and struggled to ease soldiers' battle-haunted minds. After the war, the hard lessons learned by doctors and nurses were brought back to Canada. A new Department of Health created guidelines in the aftermath of the 1918–1919 influ-enza pandemic, which had killed 55,000 Canadians and millions around the world. In a grim irony, the fight to improve civilian health was furthered by the most destructive war up to that point in human history. But medical advances were not the only thing brought back from Europe: Lifesavers and Body Snatchers exposes the disturbing story of the harvesting of human body parts in medical units behind the lines. Tim Cook has spent over a decade investigating the history of Canadian medical doctors removing the body parts of slain soldiers and transporting their brains, lungs, bones, and other organs to the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in London, England. This uncovered history has never been told before and is part of the hidden legacy of the medical war. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

CKCU's Susan Johnston sits down with Ottawa's Michelle Sinclair about her acclaimed debut novel, Almost Visible . Exploring cultural and personal memory, it reflects on what can happen when a lonely person intervenes in another person's life. Tess has just moved to Montreal from Nova Scotia, and seeks to lose herself by involving herself in the lives of others. She befriends an older man while delivering meals to the elderly. Her interest in his past veers into obsession after furtively going through his photos and letters and "borrowing" his journal. Though fact and fiction are blurred, they reveal a man shaken by political polarization and repression in his Latin-American homeland. Tess learns about a young, passionate man in the 1970s forced to reconcile his love for a militant young woman and his dedication to his best friend whose family is on the other side of the political divide. As she delves deeper into Mr. the man's story, she questions her own life choices, emotions and obsessions. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

Steven W. Beattie interviews Elyse Friedman, acclaimed author, screenwriter, poet and playwright. Her latest novel, The Opportunist is a sly, compulsively readable tale about greed, power and the world's most devious family. When Alana Shropshire's seventy-six-year-old father, Ed, starts dating Kelly, a saucy twenty-eight-year-old, a flurry of messages arrive from Alana's brothers, urging her to help “protect Dad” from the young interloper. Alana knows that what Teddy and Martin really want to protect is their father's fortune, and she tells them she couldn't care less about the May–December romance. Long estranged from her privileged family, Alana has no stake in the game, and as a hardworking single mom, she has more important things to worry about. But when Ed and Kelly's wedding is announced, Teddy and Martin kick into hyperdrive, and eventually persuade Alana to fly to their father's 900-acre West Coast island retreat to perform one small task in their plan to lure the “gold digger” away from their father. Kelly, however, proves a lot wilier than expected, and Alana becomes entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of secrets and surprises. Will she be able to escape her brothers' elaborate web of deceit? Just how far will her siblings go to retain control? The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

The Festival's Neil Wilson sits down with Geoff Dembicki, an investigative climate change reporter to discuss his acclaimed book, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change, published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute. Burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming: this is what top American oil executives were told by scientists in 1959. But they ignored that warning. Instead, they developed one of the biggest, most polluting oil sources in the world—the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. In The Petroleum Papers, Dembicki draws from confidential oil industry documents to uncover for the first time how companies like Exxon, Koch Industries, and Shell built a global right-wing echo chamber to protect oil sands profits—a misinformation campaign that continues to this day. He also tells the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: a Seattle lawyer who brought down Big Tobacco and is now going after Big Oil, a Filipina activist whose family drowned in a climate disaster, and a former Exxon engineer pushed out for asking hard questions. With experts now warning we have less than a decade to get global emissions under control, The Petroleum Papers provides a step-by-step account of how we got to this precipice—and the politicians and companies who deserve our blame. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

Steven W. Beattie hosts a conversation with consummate storyteller and bestselling novelist Wayne Johnston. His latest, Jennie's Boy, reaches back into his past to bring us a sad, tender and at times extremely funny memoir of his Newfoundland boyhood. "Wayne Johnston's childhood in Newfoundland was full of laughter, pain and poverty. And then laughter again. His memoir, Jennie's Boy, is an uplifting account of a childhood not just survived—he came close to death too many times to count—but triumphed over. Thank god he lived to tell the tale." — Rick Mercer For six months between 1966 and 1967, Wayne Johnston and his family lived in a wreck of a house across from his grandparents in Goulds, Newfoundland. At seven, Wayne was sickly and skinny, unable to keep food down, plagued with insomnia and a relentless cough that no doctor could diagnose, though they had already removed his tonsils, adenoids and appendix. To the neigh­bours, he was known as “Jennie's boy,” a back­handed salute to his tiny, ferocious mother, who felt judged for Wayne's condition at the same time as worried he might never grow up. Jennie's Boy is Wayne's tribute to a family and a community that were simultaneously fiercely protective of him and fed up with having to make allowances for him. His boyhood was full of pain, yes, but also tenderness and Newfoundland wit. By that wit, and through love—often expressed in the most unloving ways—Wayne survived. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Peter Schneider speaks with author, journalist and publisher Michael Hingston about his remarkable book, Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda. It tells, for the first time, the complete history of Redonda's transformation from an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 MAKE A DONATION: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

We present the the third and final of our special episodes hosted by York University's Zulfikar Hirji and presented in collaboration with Carleton University's Beyond Resettlement Conference. (https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/beyond-resettlement/) Born in Uganda, Tina Athaide immigrated with her family to Canada from England and has been a teacher for thirty years. Her debut novel, Orange for the Sunsets. The Middle Grade book is a Junior Library Guild Selection and winner of the CCBC Geoffrey Bilson award for historical fiction for young readers. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. Subscribe: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 Donations: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

We present the second of three special episodes hosted by York University's Zulfikar Hirji and presented in collaboration with Carleton University's Beyond Resettlement Conference. (https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/beyond-resettlement/) Tasneem Jamal was born in Mbarara, Uganda, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. The author of the novel Where the Air Is Sweet, she serves as a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly and is at work on her second novel. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. Subscribe: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 Donation: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

We present the first of three special episodes hosted by York University's Zulfikar Hirji and presented in collaboration with Carleton University's Beyond Resettlement Conference. (https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/beyond-resettlement/) Hafsa Zayyan is half-Nigerian, half-Pakistani and was born and raised (mostly) in the UK. She is a dispute resolution lawyer working in the City of London and is also the author of We Are All Birds of Uganda, the winner of MerkyBooks' inaugural New Writer's Prize and short-listed for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

This conversation between CBC's Amanda Pfeffer and Dr. Gabor Maté was recorded at a live event on October 1, 2022. The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. Gabor Maté's internationally bestselling books have changed the way we look at addiction and have been integral in shifting the conversations around ADHD, stress, disease, embodied trauma, and parenting. Now, in this revolutionary book, he eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their health care systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today's culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. In The Myth of Normal, co-written with his son Daniel, Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society, and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Poet Ellen Chang-Richardson reunites with David Ly for a conversation on his second collection Dream of Me as Water, which explores ways of being that are not beholden to the expectations of others. Using water as his central metaphor, Ly meditates on how identity is never a stagnant concept, but instead something that is intangible, fluid, and ever-evolving. Dream of Me as Water revels in the nuances of the self, flouting outside perceptions for deeper, more personal realities.

Kate Heartfield sits down with acclaimed bestseller Emma Donoghue to discuss her latest move, Haven. Around the year 600, three men vow to leave the world behind and set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them. In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar priest named Artt has a dream in which God tells him to leave the sinful world behind. With two monks—young Trian and old Cormac—he rows down the River Shannon in search of an isolated spot in which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find the impossibly steep, bare island known today as Skellig Michael. In such a place, what will survival mean? Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Sean Wilson sits down with Rich Larson to talk about his acclaimed second novel, Ymir, a gripping, far-future thriller. "Larson is a writer who can do just about anything, and in his second novel he splices Iain M. Banks with Alastair Reynolds…This is brain-busting sci-fi for the hardcore crowd." — Nick Wolven Yorick never wanted to see his homeworld again. He left Ymir two decades ago, with half his face blown off and no love lost for the place. But when his employer's mines are threatened by a vicious alien machine, Yorick is shipped back home to hunt it. All he wants is to do his job and get out. Instead, Yorick is pulled into a revolution brewing beneath Ymir's frozen surface, led by the very last person he wanted to see again—the brother who sent him off in pieces twenty years ago.

Author and poet Rhonda Douglas hosts a conversation with Helen Humphreys, winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction and the Toronto Book Award, about her latest publication, And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life . An artist's solitude is a sacred space, one to be guarded and kept apart from the chaos of the world. This isolation allows for uninhibited wandering, uninterrupted meditation and the nurturing of sparks of inspiration into fires of creation. But in the artist's quiet there is also loneliness, self-doubt, the possibility of collapsing too far inward. What an artist needs is a familiar, a creature perfectly suited to accompany them on this coveted, difficult journey. They need a companion with emotional intelligence, innate curiosity, passion and energy and an enthusiasm for the world beyond, but also the capacity to sleep contentedly for many hours. What an artist needs, Helen Humphreys would say, is a dog. And a Dog Called Fig is a memoir of the writing life told through the dogs Humphreys has lived with and loved over a lifetime, culminating with the recent arrival and settling in of Fig, a Vizsla puppy. Interspersed are stories of other writers and their irreplaceable companions: Virginia Woolf and Grizzle, Gertrude Stein and Basket, Thomas Hardy and Wessex—the dog who walked the dining table at dinner parties, taking whatever he liked—and many more. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Don't miss this conversation between CKCU's Susan Johnston and award-winning screenwriter and director Katie Tallo about her latest novel, Poison Lilies. In this follow-up to the international bestseller Dark August, Gus Monet becomes dangerously entangled with a powerful family whose wealth and success are built on dark and deadly secrets. After moving back to her hometown and solving her mother's murder, Augusta (Gus) Monet thought she was finally settled. Content for the first time in her life. Done with digging into the past. But it's not to be. Cue hard reset number whatever. When Gus makes a mistake she can't undo, she does the only thing she can: cuts and runs. Packs all her things in the dead of night and takes off. Gus lands at The Ambassador Court, an art-deco apartment building with cheap rent in one of Ottawa's oldest neighborhoods where no one knows her. The perfect place for a fresh start—or at least a good place to hide. She soon meets Poppy Honeywell, her reclusive elderly neighbor who wanders about in a pink kimono like an aging Hollywood starlet and who happens to be a descendant of the Mutchmores, one of the city's founding families. When a body emerges from an icy pond in a nearby park, Gus's growing curiosity with Poppy and her influential family suddenly takes a perilous turn with deadly consequences. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Join us for a conversation between Sean Wilson and Dr. Keith Seifert, author of The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi: Exploring the Microscopic World in Our Forests, Homes, and Bodies. In this illuminating book, esteemed mycologist Keith Seifert reveals the important role that microscopic fungi, including yeasts, molds, and slimes, play in our lives, all while remaining invisible to the naked eye. Despite their many benefits, we hold a precarious relationship with fungi: fungal diseases lead to over 1 million deaths each year, and they have played a destructive role in disasters ranging from the Irish Potato Famine to possibly even the extinction of the dinosaurs. The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi urges us to better understand our relationship with fungi-and to plan our future with them in mind-while revealing their world in all its beautiful complexity. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Join us for a conversation between poets nina jane drystek and Conyer Clayton winner of the Ottawa Book Award. But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves, Conyer Clayton's follow-up to her award-winning debut, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite, is a collection of prose poems that employs surrealism, humour, and body horror to cope with CPTSD, assault, loss, fear, and the memories of it all. The narrator weaves her way through largely aquatic landscapes-water parks, ponds, beast-filled lakes, vast oceans. She walks through time, reverting to childhood and back within a few lines, has the sureness of knowledge that exists only in dreamscapes, and foreshadows the inevitable with a calm derived from accepting the absurd. These poems, hallucinatory and unexpected, are threaded by repetition: Here is another car accident. Here is another man to flee from. Here is questioned memory. Here is the site of grief, revisited, and sometimes, within it, tentatively, hope. In these poems, Clayton explores how we question the validity of our own memories, especially those related to abuse and assault, and the way we forget-or obsess over potentially forgetting-memories of those who've died. These poems validate dreams, by proxy, and all internal experience as authentic and valid experience that carries wisdom even when we don't know it. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Peter Schneider interviews Naben Ruthnam about his novel, A Hero of Our Time, a vicious takedown of superficial diversity initiatives and tech culture, with a beating heart of broken sincerity. Osman Shah is a pitstop on his white colleague Olivia Robinson's quest for corporate domination at AAP, an edutech startup determined to automate higher education. Osman, obsessed by Olivia's ability to successfully disguise ambition and self-interest as collectivist diversity politics, is bent on exposing her. Aided by his colleague turned comrade-in-arms Nena, who loathes and tolerates him in equal measure, Osman delves into Olivia's twisted past. But at every turn, he's stymied by his unfailing gift for cruel observation, which he turns with most ferocity on himself, without ever noticing what it is that stops him from connecting to anyone in his past or present. As Osman loses his grip on his family, Nena, and everything he thought was essential to his identity, he confronts an enemy who may simply be too good at her job to be defeated. A Hero of Our Time cracks the veneer of well-intentioned race conversations in the West, dismantles cheery narratives of progress through tech and “streamlined” education, and exposes the venomous self-congratulation and devouring lust for wealth, power, and property that lurks beneath. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Author and editor Stuart Ross sits down with ReLit Award Winner Michael Blouin to talk about his new novel, I Am Billy the Kid , which imagines the life of the infamous gun fighter after he fakes his own death and heads to Canada in the company of his older brother Joseph. History tells us that the short and violent life of William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, ended at the hand of Pat Garrett on the moonless night of July 14, 1881. But I Am Billy the Kid tells a different story, straight from Billy himself. This revisionist history seen through the lens of a twenty-first century sensibility features the picaresque hero we thought we knew and the unexpected one that we don't; a fearless and determined young woman who is in no mood to be saved and would much prefer exacting her own revenge. Billy has been in an alcoholic haze since a failed attempt to escape notoriety by faking his own death. By 1915, his fame has only increased, and when word of a possible ruse leaks out, Billy finds himself once again on the run. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Don Butler interviews Ottawa's Kate Heartfield about her international bestseller, The Embroidered Book , a novel of revolution, magic, and royal romance. “Power is not something you are given. Power is something you take. When you are a woman, it is a little more difficult, that's all.” 1768. Charlotte, daughter of the Habsburg Empress, arrives in Naples to marry a man she has never met. Her sister Antoine is sent to France, and in the mirrored corridors of Versailles they rename her Marie Antoinette. The sisters are alone, but they are not powerless. When they were only children, they discovered a book of spells – spells that work, with dark and unpredictable consequences. In a time of vicious court politics, of discovery and dizzying change, they use the book to take control of their lives. But every spell requires a sacrifice. And as love between the sisters turns to rivalry, they will send Europe spiralling into revolution. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Steven W. Beattie hosts a conversation with Giller Prize nominee Sharon English about Night in the World , a tender ensemble novel about coming home to oneself and one's family through the beauty and soulfulness of Earth, even in an age of unravelling. Brothers Justin and Oliver have never been close. Justin owns an iconic Toronto restaurant and lives with his wife and daughter in Baby Point. Oliver, a former environmental reporter, does admin for a local gym and rents an attic apartment. Yet both men know their worlds stand on the brink. With their mother's abrupt death, each sets out to set things right: Oliver to reclaim a beloved home, Justin to save one that's falling apart. Intersecting Justin's and Oliver's journeys is Gabe: a budding biologist enchanted by the underappreciated beauty of moths, and conflicted by the demands of scientific scrutiny. As the brothers' pursuits take them from Toronto Island to the Humber River, from drugs and transgressive art to meetings with imperiled activists, Gabe stakes everything on a glimpse of a new possibility. Sharon English has penned a tender and powerful novel about the claims places make on our hearts, and how journeys into darkness are sometimes necessary to see through catastrophe. Night in the World explores the need to end our separations from each other and from nature -- coming home, at last, to a beleaguered yet still beautiful world. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

"Poguemahone is like a high dive: The toughest part of reading it might be convincing your feet to leave the board. Once you've done that, gravity does the rest." —New York Times The Festival's Neil Wilson sits down with Patrick McCabe for a conversation about his latest, Poguemahone , an epic reinvention of the verse novel that combines Modernist fragmentation and Beat spontaneity with Irish folklore, then douses it in whiskey and sets it on fire. Poguemahone is a swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue by the Booker-shortlisted author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto. Una Fogarty, suffering from dementia in a seaside nursing home, would be all alone without her brother Dan, whose epic free-verse monologue tells their family story. Exile from Ireland and immigrant life in England. Their mother's trials as a call girl. Young Una's search for love in a seemingly haunted hippie squat, and the two-timing Scottish stoner poet she'll never get over. Now she sits outside in the sun as her memories unspool from Dan's mouth and his own role in the tale grows ever stranger— and more sinister. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Join Stephen Brockwell for a conversation with author, poet and editor Stuart Ross about his latest publication, The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, a poignant meditation on mortality. A writer friend once pointed out that whenever Stuart Ross got close to something heavy and “real” in a poem, a hamburger would inevitably appear for comic relief. In this hybrid essay/memoir/poetic meditation, Ross shoves aside the heaping plate of burgers to wrestle with what it means to grieve the people one loves and what it means to go on living in the face of an enormous accumulation of loss. Written during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, shortly after the sudden death of his brother left him the last living member of his family and as a catastrophic diagnosis meant anticipating the death of his closest friend, this meditation on mortality ? a kind of literary shiva ? is Ross's most personal book to date. More than a catalogue of losses, The Book of Grief and Hamburgers is a moving act of resistance against self-annihilation and a desperate attempt to embrace all that was good in his relationships with those most dear to him. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Join us for a conversation between the Festival's Neil Wilson and acclaimed author Mary-Lou Zeitoun about her latest young adult novel, Jamilah at the End of the World . Set against the backdrop of a brutal Toronto summer heatwave, seventeen-year-old Jamilah Monsour makes plans for what she's certain is the beginning of the climate change catastrophe that will end the world. Luckily, Jamilah knows what has to be done to save her family: transform the back alley garage into a bunker. Reluctantly her parents allow the bunker, but they draw the line when she announces she's going to skip university and instead use the money they had saved for her education to buy solar panels and a generator. When an electricity blackout strikes, Jamilah's climate change anxiety kicks into high gear and she ends up staying out all night, infuriating her father who is done with all this doomsday nonsense. Tension at home erupts and Jamilah runs away and joins a climate change protest where she learns about solidarity and agency, giving her hope for the future. When she returns home, her parents see just how deep Jamilah's climate change convictions run and the family discusses her attending university to study environmental science, a plan they can all agree on. But Jamilah still plans on buying a generator, just in case. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Weaving together the lives of three women, Looking for Jane is an unforgettable debut about the devastating consequences that come from a lack of choice - and the enduring power of a mother's love. Don't miss this conversation between Janet Somerville and Heather Marshall. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

CKCU's Susan Johnston sits down with Mark Frutkin, the Trillium Book Award-wining author of Fabrizio's Return about his latest historical novel, The Artist and the Assassin . The play of light and shadow defines Mark Frutkin's vibrant narrative based on the life of the seventeenth-century painter known as Caravaggio, whose revolutionary use of the chiaroscuro technique fuelled his dazzling success while his demons led him down the path of exile and, ultimately, assassination. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Sean Wilson sits down with Katie Kitamura, whose latest acclaimed bestseller, Intimacies, was one of the best reviews novels of 2021. It was a New York Times TOP 10 Book, Longlisted for the National Book Award and a “best book of the year” from Washington Post, Vogue, Time, Oprah Daily, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic, Kirkus and Entertainment Weekly. An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home. She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she's asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Poet and playwright David O'Meara sits down with City of Ottawa Book Award finalist Jean Van Loon to discuss her latest collection, Nuclear Family. Jean Van Loon's father was a metallurgist in an Ottawa lab that contributed to the Manhattan Project. The Geiger counter he brought home exposed her mother's dinner plate as radioactive. Her childhood friend's father sold cobalt bombs to the Soviet Union. Unbeknownst even to the family, her mother worked for Canada's Cold War intelligence service. Rooted in memory and history, Nuclear Family carries the reader into the sense of impending nuclear doom and the explosions of material wealth that shaped Van Loon's childhood. Poems come alive with image, sound, and texture, portraying the innocence of childhood games, the worldwide effects of prolonged nuclear testing, and the long-lasting legacy of her father's suicide – a fallout of radioactive silences. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Acclaimed critic Steven W. Beattie sits down with Giller Prize finalist Alexander MacLeod to discuss Animal Person , his new story collection about the needs, temptations, and tensions that exist just beneath the surface of our lives. Named a Canadian Fiction title to watch by the CBC, Quill & Quire, and 49th Shelf, and a "must-read book" by Maclean's. Featuring stories published in The New Yorker, Granta, and the O. Henry Prize Stories. Startling, suspenseful, deeply humane yet alert to the undertow of our darker instincts, the eight stories in Animal Person illuminate what it means to exist in the perilous space between desire and action, and to have your faith in what you hold true buckle and give way. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Writer, Speaker and Producer Dev Ramsawakh talks with Chloé Cooper Jones—Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient—about Easy Beauty , her groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and a journey to far-flung places in search of a new way of seeing and being seen. “I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.” So begins Chloé Cooper Jones's bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as “less than.” The way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to “the neutral room in her mind” until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she'd been denied, and denied herself. From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability, and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths.

" With literary precision, he delves into the history and culture of conquest, drawing a direct line from actions committed hundreds of years ago to the planet's current predicament. A singular achievement and a title of its time, The Nutmeg's Curse reminds us why the land is crying." –Booklist Sean Wilson sits down with Amitav Ghosh to discuss his latest, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis . In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, Amitav finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism's violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment. A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh's new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg's Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh's narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh's hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning.

Join us for a conversation between Jana Buhlmann and Dr. Stefanie Green, a leading pioneer in medically assisted dying who began her career in the maternity ward and now helps patients who are suffering explore and then fulfill their end of life choices. Dr. Stefanie Green has been forging new paths in the field of medical assistance in dying since 2016. In her landmark memoir, Dr. Green reveals the reasons a patient might seek an assisted death, how the process works, what the event itself can look like, the reactions of those involved, and what it feels like to oversee proceedings and administer medications that hasten death. She describes the extraordinary people she meets and the unusual circumstances she encounters as she navigates the intricacy, intensity, and utter humanity of these powerful interactions. This Is Assisted Dying will change the way people think about their choices at the end of life, and show that assisted dying is less about death than about how we wish to live. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Peter Schneider sits down with the award-winning author of Ghost Wall and Summerwater. Sarah Moss's latest novel The Fell is a riveting novel of mutual responsibility, personal freedom, and the ever-nearness of disaster. Sarah Moss's The Fell is a story of mutual responsibility, personal freedom, and compassion. Suspenseful, witty, and wise, it asks probing questions about how close so many live to the edge and about who we are in the world, who we are to our neighbors, and who we become when the world demands we shut ourselves away. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Join us for a look back at some highlights from past seasons of Writers Festival Radio as we head towards our 25th Anniversary this Fall.  This recap spotlights some content from Season 3, which ran in the Fall of 2021. Click play to hear from Yusef Salaam, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Jordan Abel, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Melanie Challenger and Myriam J.A. Chancy. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Join us for a look back at some highlights from past seasons of Writers Festival Radio as we head towards our 25th Anniversary this Fall.    This recap spotlights some content from Season 2, which ran in the Spring of 2021. Click play for interview clips featuring Stephanie Kelton, Annalee Newitz, Arkady Martine and Andri Snaer Magnason, and brief readings by Amanda Leduc, Kim Echlin, Jael Richardson and Camilla Gibb.

Join us for a look back at some highlights from past seasons of Writers Festival Radio as we head towards our 25th Anniversary this Fall.    This recap spotlights some content from Season 1, which ran in the Fall of 2020. Click play for interview clips featuring Aislinn Hunter, David Eagleman, Will Ferguson, Shani Mootoo, Tara Henley and Stephen Nachmanovitch, and brief readings by Craig Davidson, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Andrew Pyper and Francis Boyle. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books.   The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Lisa Samson hosts a conversation with Edith Blais on The Weight of Sand, her unforgettable memoir of the 450 days she spent in captivity, and her defiant refusal to have her humanity stripped away. When Edith meets Luca in a small Northern town, the two connect instantly. Under the Northern Lights, they develop a deep friendship over their shared passions: travel, living off the land, a bohemian life. In search of wanderlust, they embark on an epic road trip from Italy to Togo, where they will join their friend's sustainable farming project. Upon arriving on the African continent, they change their itinerary and drive through Africa's Sahel region, a haven for militant groups, where they are surrounded and captured. Little was known about Edith's and Luca's fate until they reappeared in Mali more than one year later, having mysteriously escaped their captors. Now, Edith shares her harrowing story with the world for the first time-complete with the poems that became a lifeline for her in captivity, which she wrote in secret with a pen borrowed from another hostage. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

The Festival's Sean Wilson hosts a conversation with Alberta Book Award winner Todd Babiak about his latest acclaimed work, The Spirits Up, an unforgettable story of a family desperate for something to believe in. Benedict is an inventor whose life's work is a clean energy machine. It has just made him an overnight sensation and his family is suddenly wealthy. Benedict's wife, Karen, and his teenage daughters, Charlotte and Poppy, are proud of him. But there are problems Benedict is too busy to see: Karen is deeply unhappy in the marriage and contemplating an affair, Charlotte, who is dealing with a chronic illness, is growing more and more distant, and Poppy is cracking under the pressures of her social circle. And there's another problem. Benedict holds a rather terrible secret about his clean energy machine. The Spirits Up is the story of a family haunted by the charmlessness of middle age and the cruelties of modern teenage life. Part social satire and part contemporary ghost story (with a hint of Dickens's A Christmas Carol), it is an exploration of a timeless question: what happens when there's nothing to believe? Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Writer, visual artist, and editor, Manahil Bandukwala hosts a conversation with acclaimed poet and lawyer Leslie Roach on her debut collection, Finish this Sentence. The poems examine personal experience in living with racism and healing from its distorting effects on the Self. As this book weaves through the anger and anxiety provoked by racism, it points to the ultimate realization: one is neither the conditioning nor the negative thoughts that racism provokes. Rather, one is powerful and able to arrest those thoughts. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Join our host, Stephen Brockwell, for a conversation with Governor General's Award, Trillium Book Award and Ottawa Book Award-nominee Rob Winger on It Doesn't Matter What We Meant , a collection of poems that question perception, meaning, and context. Partly an investigation of system versus system error, It Doesn't Matter What We Meant asks us to own up to our own inherited contexts, our own luck or misfortune, our own ways of moving through each weekday. From meditations on sleepy wind turbines to Voyager 1's dormant thrusters, from country road culverts to the factory floor's punch clock, from allied English-to-English folkloric translations to the crumbling limestone of misremembered basements, this is poetry that complicates what it means to live within and beyond the languages, lexicons, and locations around us. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Don't miss this conversation between Elaine Bomberry, arts activist, promoter, producer, and former General Manager of Native Earth Performing Arts, and her big-hearted and joyful friend Tomson Highway, one of Canada's most acclaimed Indigenous writers and performers. We are thrilled to welcome Tomson back to the Festival to celebrate the launch of his memoir, Permanent Astonishment . Tomson Highway was born in a snowbank on an island in the sub-Arctic, the eleventh of twelve children in a nomadic, caribou-hunting Cree family. Growing up in a land of ten thousand lakes and islands, Tomson relished being pulled by dogsled beneath a night sky alive with stars, sucking the juices from roasted muskrat tails, and singing country music songs with his impossibly beautiful older sister and her teenaged friends. Surrounded by the love of his family and the vast, mesmerizing landscape they called home, his was in many ways an idyllic far-north childhood. But five of Tomson's siblings died in childhood, and Balazee and Joe Highway, who loved their surviving children profoundly, wanted their two youngest sons, Tomson and Rene, to enjoy opportunities as big as the world. And so when Tomson was six, he was flown south by float plane to attend a residential school. A year later Rene joined him to begin the rest of their education. In 1990 Rene Highway, a world-renowned dancer, died of an AIDS-related illness. Permanent Astonishment: Growing Up in the Land of Snow and Sky is Tomson's extravagant embrace of his younger brother's final words: "Don't mourn me, be joyful." His memoir offers insights, both hilarious and profound, into the Cree experience of culture, conquest, and survival. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Award winning author, public speaker and LGBTQ-Refugee activist, Danny Ramadan hosts this conversation on poetry, parenthood and hope with Lambda Literary and Stonewall Book Award-winner Hasan Namir. Hasan's latest acclaimed collection, Umbilical Cord , includes joyful perspectives about parenting, fatherhood and hope. These warm free-verse poems document the journey that he and his husband took to have a child. Between love letters to their young son, Namir shares insight into his love story with his husband, the complexities of the IVF surrogacy process and the first year as a family of three. Umbilical Cord is a heartfelt book for parents or would-be parents, with a universal message of hope. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.

Don't miss this conversation between the Festival's Sean Wilson and Amitava Kumar, the acclaimed author of Immigrant, Montana. His latest, A Time Outside This Time, is a one-of-a-kind novel about fake news, memory, and the ways in which truth can be not only stranger than fiction, but a fiction of its own. When a writer named Satya attends a prestigious artist retreat, he finds the pressures of the outside world won't let up: President Trump rages online; a dangerous virus envelops the globe; and the 24-hour news cycle throws fuel on every fire. For most of the retreat fellows, such stories are unbearable distractions; but for Satya, these Orwellian interruptions begin to crystalize into an idea for his new novel, Enemies of the People, about the lies we tell ourselves and each other. Satya scours his life for moments where truth bends toward the imagined, and misinformation is mistaken as fact. Sifting through newspaper clippings, the President's tweets, childhood memories from India, and moments as an immigrant, a husband, father, and teacher, A Time Outside This Time captures our feverish political moment with intelligence, beauty, and an eye for the uncanny. It is a brilliant meditation on life in a post-truth era. In the midst of the global pandemic, stretching on indefinitely, this piercing novel flawlessly captures the sentiment on everyone's mind of how impossible it can feel to remember, or to imagine, a time outside of this one. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives.