Sat, Oct 31  •  5:30pm

Secrets & Legacies

Zak Jones and Salha Obaid

Join the bestselling authors for a talk on their latest novels

Fiction
Conversation
Ticket or Pass Required
Passes available
View Passes
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Secrets & Legacies
Secrets & Legacies

Sat, Oct 31  •  5:30pm

Secrets & Legacies

Zak Jones and Salha Obaid

Join the bestselling authors for a talk on their latest novels

Conversation
Fiction
Ticket or Pass Required
Passes available
View Passes
↑

About

Zak Jones’ Fancy Gap and Salha Obaid’s Circle of Spices take us from Appalachia to the Arabian Peninsula, tracing families shaped by secrets, loss and the legacies passed between generations. From evangelical fervour and opioid addiction to supernatural gifts and long-buried mysteries, their novels explore poverty, violence and forces beyond their characters’ control. Jones and Obaid come into conversation across cultures and continents to consider how the past reaches into the present, how family secrets can shape destiny, and the ways inheritance, survival and faith bind generations across time and place.

A powerful, unforgettable debut: three estranged generations in Appalachia grapple with loss, poverty, and their individual demons, until an explosive climax brings them together in apocalyptic deliverance. In the hills and isolated mountain enclaves of southern Appalachia, Nana Grace has left her own family behind to become the “Shepherd” of a disaffected flock of worshippers that she keeps in thrall through her charismatic preaching and the dispensing of stolen drugs. Her daughter, Jane, struggles with breast cancer, the painful effects of its treatment, and the expectation to perform unceasing gratitude toward the evangelical community that reluctantly supports her out of a transactional sense of duty.
Read more about Fancy Gap

Published by Penguin Random House Canada

Cover of Fancy Gap

A windstorm of fire, scent, and vengeance engulfs three different generations in the Arabian Peninsula.
In the ninth century AD, Abbasid poet Ibn al-Mo’taz hides in his palace from the flames of revenge eating at his soul. In the early 1920s, Shamma is born to a family of Dubai spice traders with a nose unlike any of her relatives, altering the shape of their destiny.
Read more about Circle of Spices

Published by ELF Publishing

Cover of Circle of Spices

Image of Zak Jones
Zak Jones is a writer, literary scholar and US Army Veteran. A dual Canadian-American citizen, he grew up between rural North Carolina and Toronto.
Read more about Zak Jones

Image of Salha Obaid
Salha Obaid is an Emirati writer and novelist who published her first short story collection, Alzheimer, in 2010. The Messenger of Happiness and The iPad’s Life on the Zorba Way followed in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Her fourth collection, A White Strand Implicitly (2015), won the Al Owais Prize for Creativity, as did her novel Except Your Grandmother Was Singing (2025).
Read more about Salha Obaid

Dates & Times

Sat, Oct 31
5:30pm
↑
6:30pm
A book signing will follow this event

Tickets

Full Festival Pass
SOLD OUT
Regular $159
Under 30 $79
5-Day Festival Pass
Includes 5-day festival events. Excludes Masterclasses.
Regular $159
Under 30 $79
2-Day Weekend
Includes all Victoria University events. Excludes Winter Garden Theatre events and Masterclasses.
Regular $69
Under 30 $39
1-Day Saturday
Includes all Saturday events.
Excludes Masterclasses.
Regular $39
Under 30 $29
Pass Information
5-Day Festival Pass includes Barbara Kingsolver and East West Street: A Song of Good & Evil .
2-Day Weekend and 1-Day Passes do not include Winter Garden Theatre events.
View Passes
↑

Venue

Emmanuel College, Room 119
75 Queen's Park Crescent, Toronto, ON

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