About

For many women in the afternoon of life, society (read, male society) is quick to dismiss them as invisible and irrelevant, when in fact the ‘le troisieme age’ offers a wealth of new opportunities to “live life fully as a woman on the road to the far side of mid-life”. Join two outstanding women who have shaped the world with their words to celebrate the unashamed pleasures of life in the latter years. Men are welcome. Cathrin Bradbury has been a leading journalist for over forty years, her new memoir is This Way Up: Old Friends, New Love, and a Map for the Road Ahead. Acclaimed novelist and co-founder of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, Susan Swan shares her new memoir Big Girls Don’t Cry, memoir about what it means to defy expectations as a woman, a mother and an artist. Gill Deacon, popular radio host and podcaster, is the moderator. Her upcoming book about living with uncertainty, A Love Affair with the Unknown, will be published by House of Anansi January 2026.

Moderated by Gill Deacon

This Way Up

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Big Girls Don’t Cry

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Cathrin Bradbury

Cathrin Bradury worked as a leader and top editor of major Canadian news organizations and magazines for forty years, including as Senior News Director at CBC News, Senior Editor at Maclean's magazine, and Managing Editor at The Globe and Mail, where she won two National Newspaper Awards for Special Projects. She currently writes features and a column for the Toronto Star called "The 3/4 Life Crisis," and is a regular contributor to The Walrus magazine, where her feature article "The End of Retirement" was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2024.

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Susan Swan

Susan Swan is a Toronto novelist and non-fiction writer and a professor emerita at York University. Her books include The Wives of Bath, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World, What Casanova Told Me, The Western Light and Stupid Boys Are Good to Relax With.

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