Wed, Oct 28  •  5:30pm

Women, Grief & Resistance

Harriet Alida Lye and Vivek Shraya

Hear from these best-selling Canadian authors

Fiction
Conversation
Pass Required
Passes available
Women, Grief & Resistance
Women, Grief & Resistance

Wed, Oct 28  •  5:30pm

Women, Grief & Resistance

Harriet Alida Lye and Vivek Shraya

Hear from these best-selling Canadian authors

Conversation
Fiction
Pass Required
Passes available

About

What happens when the expectations placed on women become impossible to ignore? Harriet Alida Lye and Vivek Shraya come together to explore the complexities of identity, family, grief, and desire. Lye’s Motherclown follows a mother and daughter as they deal with their grief and resentment towards each other. In Shraya’s The Hystericals a woman grapples with the loss of her sister as part of a mass protest movement against a regime criminalising their existence. In conversation, they discuss how the unconventional can challenge ideas about what it means to be a woman.

From the bestselling author of I’m Afraid of Men comes a propulsive and chilling novel for the post-#MeToo era, set in an isolationist state where one woman’s death sparks a movement that could liberate women or destroy them all. When Sarah Munroe is sexually assaulted on her university campus and her attacker walks free, she makes a devastating choice: she publicly takes her own life in a final act of defiance against a regime that has stripped women of their rights. Her final message ignites a radical movement called #FreeToo.

Published by Penguin Random House Canada

Indigo’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026 • CBC Books Spring Fiction List 2026 • CBC Books Canadian Fiction Bestseller A dual coming-of-age story about performance—both public and private—sexuality, envy, and grief. Motherclown explores the most fundamental and potentially explosive of human relationships: that of a mother and her daughter. In the wake of her father’s death, twenty-one-year-old Elise leaves her boyfriend, mother, and hometown of Niagara Falls to move to Paris. She’s earned a place at Chevalier, an elite physical theatre school with a focus on clown.

Published by Penguin Random House Canada

Harriet Alida Lye is the bestselling, award-winning author of the novels Let It Destroy You and The Honey Farm, the memoir Natural Killer, and co-author of the picture book Serge the Snail Without a Shell. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, National Post, The Happy Reader, Hazlitt, Vice, Catapult, and more.

Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, TV, film, and fashion. A three-time Canadian Screen Award winner, Vivek is the creator and writer of the CBC Gem Original Series How to Fail as a Popstar, which had its international premiere at Cannes.

Dates & Times

Wed, Oct 28
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
1-Day Wednesday
Includes all Wednesday events.
Excludes Masterclasses.
Regular $29
Under 30 $15
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.

Venue

Victoria College Chapel
91 Charles St W, Toronto, ON M5S 2C7

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