Finding Their Way: Courage, Perseverance and the Search for Identity in Books for Young People

Colleen Nelson, Jordan Scott, Rebecca Thomas and Ryan B. Patrick

Finding Their Way: Courage, Perseverance and the Search for Identity in Books for Young People

Colleen Nelson, Jordan Scott, Rebecca Thomas and Ryan B. Patrick

5:00pm

Friday, May 28, 2021

Join us live to hear from a selection of the finalists for the 2020 GGBooks Young People’s Literature Awards, as they come together for a conversation in anticipation of the winners announcement on June 1. Panelists will join CBC Books’ Ryan B. Patrick to discuss how their protagonists demonstrate courage, perseverance and openness to new experiences as they discover who they are and how they belong.

Moderator: Ryan B. Patrick

Panelists:
Colleen Nelson, Harvey Holds His Own (Text Category)
Jordan Scott, I Talk Like a River (Illustrated Category)
Rebecca Thomas, Swift Fox All Along (Illustrated Category)

Check out the full schedule of TIFA’s exclusive event series featuring the 2020 GGBooks Young People’s Literature Awards finalists here.

This event is organized in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts to celebrate the Governor General’s Literary Awards.

Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) logo       GG Books & Canada Council for the Arts logo

Panel Discussion

Join us live to hear from a selection of the finalists for the 2020 GGBooks Young People’s Literature Awards, as they come together for a conversation in anticipation of the winners announcement on June 1. Panelists will join CBC Books’ Ryan B. Patrick to discuss how their protagonists demonstrate courage, perseverance and openness to new experiences as they discover who they are and how they belong.

Moderator: Ryan B. Patrick

Panelists:
Colleen Nelson, Harvey Holds His Own (Text Category)
Jordan Scott, I Talk Like a River (Illustrated Category)
Rebecca Thomas, Swift Fox All Along (Illustrated Category)

Check out the full schedule of TIFA’s exclusive event series featuring the 2020 GGBooks Young People’s Literature Awards finalists here.

This event is organized in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts to celebrate the Governor General’s Literary Awards.

Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) logo       GG Books & Canada Council for the Arts logo

Panel Discussion

Featured Authors

Colleen Nelson
An author and junior high school teacher, Colleen Nelson earned her Bachelor of Education from the University of Manitoba in her hometown of Winnipeg. Her previous works include the critically acclaimed middle-grade novel Harvey Comes Home (shortlisted for the 2021 McNally Young People’s Award) and Harvey Holds His Own (2020 Governor General’s Award finalist); Sadia (2019 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award winner); and Blood Brothers (2018 McNally Robinson Book of the Year for Young People). Colleen writes daily in between appearances at hockey rinks and soccer fields in support of her two sports-loving sons. The family’s West Highland Terrier Rosie adds an extra-loveable dose of liveliness to their lives.

Read more about Colleen Nelson

Jordan Scott
Jordan Scott is a poet whose work includes Silt, Blert, DECOMP, and Night & Ox. Blert, which explores the poetics of stuttering, is the subject of two National Film Board of Canada projects, Flub and Utter: a poetic memoir of the mouth and STUTTER. Scott was the recipient of the 2018 Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for his contributions to Canadian poetry. I Talk Like a River is Scott's first book for children. He lives in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island with his wife and two sons.

Read more about Jordan Scott

Rebecca Thomas
Rebecca Thomas is a Mi’kmaw woman registered with Lennox Island First Nation. She is the daughter of a residential school survivor and unrelenting advocate for her community. She is a published poet and was the Halifax Poet Laureate from 2016 to 2018. She lives in K’jipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki.

Read more about Rebecca Thomas

Ryan B. Patrick
Ryan B. Patrick is a CBC producer in Toronto. Ryan is one of the producers responsible for the digital content programming for the CBC Books site, including the radio shows Writers & Company and The Next Chapter. Ryan also has experience as a book reviewer and arts & culture journalist who has written for Exclaim!, NOW and THIS magazine. He also sits on the juries for the Polaris Music Prize and Prism Prize and has been a past JUNO Awards Judge.

Read more about Ryan B. Patrick

5:00pm

Friday, May 28

What to read

Harvey Holds His Own by , I Talk Like a River by , Swift Fox All Along by ,
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