Join acclaimed Canadian poet and novelist Lisa Robertson, author of The Baudelaire Fractal, as she presents her latest novel, Riverwork. The novel follows Lucy Frost, a domestic worker in Paris who becomes captivated by the buried Bièvre river and the notebooks of her vanished great-aunt, a researcher who spent years tracing its history. As Lucy […]
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What do we inherit from the women who came before us—and what happens when that inheritance refuses to stay buried? Join Marie NDiaye, acclaimed French author of The Witch (translated by Jordan Stump), and Amanda Peters, author of The Birthing Tree, as they share stories about family, motherhood, tradition and the secrets that shape generations. […]
Booker-longlisted author Mohammed Hanif will appear at the Festival to present Rebel English Academy, a sharp, darkly funny novel set against the charged realities of contemporary Pakistan. Hanif turns his wry eye to the business of English and the complicated promises of education and social mobility. At its heart is a cast of unforgettable characters […]
Celebrated Tamil author Jeyamohan brings The Abyss, a raw, tender and darkly comic novel about human suffering, exploitation and the search for liberation. Set in 1991 Tamil Nadu, it follows Pothivelu Pandaram, a seemingly respectable, God-fearing man whose wealth comes from the cruel trade of exploiting disabled beggars for profit. When an impulsive deal upends […]
Akutagawa Prize-winning author Jose Ando and writer, editor, and musician Jared Bland, writing under the pen name Alex Spring, come together for a gripping conversation about crime, identity, community and justice. In Ando’s Jackson Alone, four queer, mixed-race Black Japanese men come together to investigate the sudden emergence of a violent pornographic video that features someone […]
Nyla Matuk’s Leila and Khaled and Ashraf Zaghal’s Seven Heavens Away explore love, loss and belonging through Palestinian lives shaped by displacement and conflict. In Matuk’s novel, a Palestinian-Canadian scholar returns to her ancestral homeland, where an encounter with a young Palestinian man forces her to confront her family’s exile and the enduring wounds of […]
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 […]
What stays with us as the years pass—and what does it take to make peace with the past? Join Anita Rau Badami, author of Asha in Her Garden, and Rabindranath Maharaj, author of A Quiet Disappearance, for a moving conversation about memory, migration, family ties and the fleeting nature of life. In Asha in Her […]
Some people spend years searching for something they may never find: an elusive animal, a lost treasure, an answer to a mystery that refuses to be solved. In What’s a Snow Leopard to You?, Chen-Fu Hsu traces a Taiwanese naturalist’s search for the snow leopard across Tibet, interwoven with the diary of a Japanese monk […]
World affairs in 2026 continue to be shaped by conflict between the United States and Iran. In King of Kings, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Kirkus Prize-winning author Scott Anderson provides much-needed historical perspective on current events, delivering a gripping account of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the catastrophic miscalculations that helped reshape the Middle East. Drawing […]
Norwegian author Mona Høvring comes together with Joseph Kertes in a poignant conversation about their latest two novels. In Høvring’s Something That Helps, a lonely teenager in coastal Norway, haunted by her mother’s suicide, finds herself drawn into a transformative relationship with an older woman that sends her down a dark path toward reconciliation and […]
In his deeply personal book of essays, The Blood of Things: A Love Letter to Afghanistan, Jamaluddin Aram reflects on Afghanistan and his own displacement and exile, weaving family history, memories of Kabul, friendship and hope into an intimate portrait of a homeland transformed by war. In Raoul de Jong’s Jaguarman, de Jong travels into […]
One week before the U.S. midterm elections, America faces a defining moment in its politics. The result could reshape the balance of power in Washington – and what follows may have profound consequences far beyond the United States. For Canada, after a tumultuous year of tariffs, trade disputes and an increasingly strained relationship with its […]
Canadian writer and poet Téa Mutonji comes together with Nigerian-born Igbo novelist Chika Unigwe for a sharp and moving conversation about the relationships between women, and how they shape our lives for better or for worse. In Mutonji’s My Person, lifelong best friends Tania and Margot reach an emotional breaking point, forcing them to reckon […]
Acclaimed Czech author Petra Hůlová and Korean novelist Lee Heejoo bring two unsettling perspectives to desire, devotion and power. In Hůlová’s The Long Version, a feminist writer in her fifties revisits a complicated relationship from her youth as her daughter challenges her understanding of consent, feminism and the shifting meanings of the past. In Lee’s […]
This workshop will help writers at any level of experience create a pitch document that is succinct, informative and attention getting. Pete Crighton worked as a marketing executive for over twenty years in the film and television world and has pitched two books successfully without the help of an agent or intermediary. This lightly interactive […]
Opening his Guest Curator series Rupture / Justice, acclaimed writer and lawyer Philippe Sands draws on his own experiences and life in the law to explore five moments that have shaped his life and when individuals, nations and institutions have sought to right historic wrongs. Interweaving history, stories and personal experience with live music, Sands […]
To define recent political, social and cultural upheaval as unprecedented is both to emphasize the crisis at hand and to negate its connection to what has gone before. In conversation with Philippe Sands, author of The Last Colony, about the Chagos Archipelago, two formidable chroniclers of the past discuss whether this is truly a historical […]
Recent political ruptures are reflective of a moment in time when we are increasingly losing faith in the institutions, communities and stories that once held a society together. New Yorker investigative journalist and Chief Washington Correspondent, Jane Mayer, is the bestselling author of Dark Money, and has spent decades exposing the hidden networks of money […]
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse and Gaël Faye have transformed histories of violence, exile and survival into extraordinary literature. Umubyeyi Mairesse’s All Your Children, Scattered follows three generations of family fractured by the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, while her new memoir, The Convoy, reconstructs her escape, aged fifteen, from the 1994 genocide. A hip-hop star […]
The stories Canada tells about itself have changed over the past decade with diverse perspectives begun to be added and a process of truth and reconciliation with Indigenous, First Nations and Metis peoples. This has been a flawed and imperfect journey and now new dynamics challenge the concept of Canada as a sovereign nation, and […]
2026 has been marked by an increase in climate catastrophes across the globe from extreme heat, forest fires to flash floods. Yet at the same time, the environmental movement is struggling to gain sufficient traction or momentum at a political or economic level. Bestselling author Robert Moor has spent years exploring how humans move through […]
“Sintering is bonding; it is building coalitions with your neighbours.” — Theory of Water: Nishaabe Maps to the Times Ahead by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson From poetry, to fiction, to nonfiction, to everything outside of and in-between, this evening’s event is a celebration of the encompassing, expansive, and uncontained way we know Indigenous excellence, globally and […]
What might it mean to build movements from a place of yearning? What forms of action become possible when we privilege stories of desire, connection, freedom, culture and joy over the stories of damage told about, but never for our communities? Bringing together four Indigenous writers from the stolen lands of Canada and Australia, this […]
