Join two Governor General’s Literary Award finalists for a conversation about society’s fraught relationship with the natural world, and the personal reckonings required to combat climate change. Poet and farmer Jenna Butler shares her experience keeping hives in northern Alberta as documented in Revery: A Year of Bees, from her deeply personal connection with the vital creatures to the bigger picture of colony collapse due to big industry. J.B. MacKinnon addresses the paradoxical effects of a consumption-based economy in The Day the World Stops Shopping, and how—despite best efforts to “green” our consumption—a decline in global carbon emissions is yet to be seen.

Interviewer: Tara Henley

This event is organized in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) to celebrate the 2021 non-fiction finalists of the Governor General’s Literary Awards, which recognize Canada’s best English-language and French-language books. The winners will be announced by the CCA on November 17.