2023-2024

Theme / thème: Air & Fire / L'Air & le Feu

Wayne Arthurson

The CLC hosted the University of Alberta's 2023-2024 Writer in Residence, Wayne Arthurson, for a reading and conversation event that was sponsored by the Writer-in-Residence Program. Wayne discussed his novella The Red Chesterfield, as well as writing about and from Edmonton.

Event Details

Date and Time: Friday, January 26, 2024, from 10:00-11:00 AM
Format and Location: In-person at Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17)

Author biography from the event promotions:

Wayne Arthurson is a writer and literary agent from Edmonton, Alberta, and is the author of eight novels and five books of nonfiction. Arthurson’s work focuses on the Indigenous experience in Canada and is informed by his Cree and French Canadian heritage. His debut novel Final Season is set in an Indigenous community that faces severe environmental upheaval due to a new hydroelectric project. His novella The Red Chesterfield won the 2020 Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence (formerly the Arthur Ellis Award) in the Best Novella category. He has been twice shortlisted for the High Plains Book Award in the Best Indigenous Writer category, and his novel Fall from Grace won the 2012 Alberta Readers' Choice Award. 

For more than thirty years, Wayne has been living, writing and working in Edmonton and has been an active member of the city's arts scene. He has served on the boards of prestigious municipal arts organizations, such as the Edmonton Arts Council and Litfest, and has judged several literary competitions. His background in journalism and broadcasting have helped to further his career as a writer in Alberta and he continues to work with and for the arts in Canada and abroad.

Podcast Episode: Hari Alluri & Michelle Porter, hosted by Alice Major 

For Episode 12 of the CLC's podcast, Hari Alluri, Alice Major, and Michelle Porter explored the literal and metaphorical significance of fire in a brilliant, wide-ranging reading and conversation. Their words crackle with energy, burn and smoulder, warm and renew, sparking new ways of imagining this powerful element, whose increasing presence in our lives demands reflection and articulation. 

Episode Released: December 2023

Author biographies from the event promotions:

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya [pronounced sha]) is an uninvited migrant poet of Philippine and South Asian descent living, writing, and working on unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, and Kwantlen, Katzie and Kwikwetlem lands of Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking peoples. Author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press), chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press) and, forthcoming in 2025, Like a Feather Holds the Sky (Brick Books), he is a co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press, a workshop facilitator, and a bookseller at Massy Books. His award-winning work can be found in journals, anthologies, and online.

Dr. Michelle Porter is a writer and scholar from Alberta and living in Newfoundland and Labrador. She is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers. Many of her ancestors (the Goulet family) told stories using music and today she tells stories using the written word. She is the author of Approaching Fire, Scratching River. Her first novel, A Grandmother Begins the Story (Penguin 2023), was a finalist for the Atwood-Gibson Writers’ Trust Award for Fiction in 2023. Her first book of poetry, Inquiries, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry, Canada 2019 and was a finalist for the E.J. Pratt Poetry Award 2021. She teaches creative writing at Memorial University in Newfoundland.

Alice Major has published eleven collections of poetry, two novels for young adults, and an award-winning collection of essays about poetry and science. Alice is the founder of the Edmonton Poetry Festival, was the first poet laureate of Edmonton, and the past president of both the Writers' Guild of Alberta and the League of Canadian Poets.

Trina Moyles in Conversation with Omar Mouallem

The CLC hosted Trina Moyles and Omar Mouallem for a reading and conversation event that was part of LitFest. Trina and Omar spoke on the topic of writing about wildfire, and read from their respective books, Lookout and Inside the Inferno: A Firefighter's Story of the Brotherhood that Saved Fort McMurray.

Event Details

Date and Time: Friday, October 20, 2023, from 12:00-1:00 PM
Format and Location: In-person at Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17)

Author biographies from the event promotions:

Trina Moyles is an author, journalist, and creative producer based between Alberta and the Yukon Territory. She is the author of three non-fiction books, including Women Who Dig (2018), Lookout (2021), which won the 2022 Alberta Memoir Award, and Black Bear, which is forthcoming with Alfred A. Knopf in 2025. Her award-winning writing, often focusing on social and environmental justice issues, has been published in the Globe and Mail, Hakai Magazine, The Walrus, and Canadian Geographic. In 2022, she received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her first book, Women Who Dig, is being adapted into a documentary film series by Edmonton-based filmmaker and director, Anna Kuelken.

Omar Mouallem is an author, filmmaker, and educator. His journalism has appeared in The Guardian, WIRED, and The Wall Street Journal. He coauthored Inside the Inferno: A Firefighter’s Story of the Brotherhood that Saved Fort McMurray, with firefighter Damian Asher, which was a national bestseller. His latest book Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas won the 2022 Wilfred Eggelston Nonfiction Award and was named one of the Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2021. His documentary The Lebanese Burger Mafia, which documents the unlikely link between fast-food and Lebanese immigrants, won the 2023 Audience Choice for Best Doc at Northwest International Documentary Festival. He also teaches creative nonfiction at the University of King’s College and is the "fake dean" of Pandemic University School of Writing, a virtual school he founded in support of writers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Martine Delvaux en conversation avec Evelyne Gagnon

Le CLC et LitFest ont présenté la romancière et essayiste féministe Martine Delvaux, qui a discuté de son ouvrage Pompières et pyromanes (2021) avec la poète Evelyne Gagnon.

Détails de l'événement

La date et l'heure: Mercredi le 18 octobre de 12h à 13h
Le format: Zoom

Biographies des auteurs:

Romancière et essayiste féministe, Martine Delvaux est notamment l’autrice de Blanc dehors, Le monde est à toi, Thelma, Louise & moi et Pompières et pyromanes. Elle a été finaliste à de nombreux prix, et plusieurs de ses livres ont été traduits en anglais et en espagnol. Son essai Le boys club a remporté le Grand Prix du livre de Montréal.

POMPIÈRES ET PYROMANES

Face à la crise climatique, Martine Delvaux refuse l’abattement et choisit le combat, celui que mène la génération de sa fille, qui tient tête aux décideurs et réclame avec force la protection de la vie sur Terre. Solidaire, elle offre ici un livre-collage tissé de catastrophes, mais surtout d’espoir, où le feu occupe une place centrale. Feu sacré des militant.es, bûchers où tant de femmes ont péri, feux follets, feux de forêt dévastateurs, rage incendiaire et feux de joie : certaines flammes nous détruisent, quand d’autres nous éclairent. Les pompières pyromanes qui habitent ce livre savent lesquelles entretenir amoureusement.

Ces pages sont nées de ma fascination pour le feu. Elles sont remplies de souvenirs brûlants, de scènes incendiées, de flammes qui ont marqué l’histoire des femmes. J’ai voulu établir une filiation de femmes qui portent le feu, rendre hommage à celles qui ont joué avec le feu. Qui ont résisté à l’injustice avec détermination, constance et patience, parfois au prix de leur vie. Toutes celles qui ont fait oeuvre de feu pour la suite du monde.

Finaliste, Prix Victor-Barbeau de l’Académie des lettres du Québec
Liste préliminaire, Prix des libraires 2022

Poète et essayiste, Evelyne Gagnon vit à Edmonton, où elle est professeure en études littéraires à l’Université d’Athabasca. Spécialiste de la poésie, elle s’intéresse aussi aux formes de la mélancolie contemporaine et, notamment, à ses liens avec l’écoanxiété et avec l’écoféminisme. Elle a fondé, en 2014, le Concours de poésie du Centre de littérature canadienne, qui entamera cette année sa 10 e édition. Ayant publié des études sur la poésie dans plusieurs ouvrages scientifiques au Canada, aux États-Unis et en France, Evelyne Gagnon a également reçu, en 2001, le Prix de poésie Clément-Marchand et ses poèmes ont paru dans Le Sabord, Moebius et Les écrits. Son recueil, Incidents (et autres rumeurs du siècle), est paru aux Éditions du Noroît, à Montréal, en 2022. 

Olive Senior

In partnership with Canada Research Chair Nominee Dr. Michael A. Bucknor, the CLC invited Olive Senior--an award-winning essayist, poet, novelist, and children's literature writer--as the first author for the CLC's 2023-24 Reading and Conversation series.

Event Details

Date and Time: Wednesday, September 27, 2023, from 12:00-1:00 PM
Format and Location: In-person at Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17)

Author biography from the event promotions:

Olive Senior’s books, articles and lectures span multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature. Her twentieth book, Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems, was recently published by Carcanet in the UK. It follows Pandemic Poems: First Wave (2021), a work consisting of alphabet poems derived from the language of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work has found worldwide resonance in numerous critical essays and translations and is taught in educational institutions at various levels. Most recently, Summer Lightning (her first short story collection; 1986) was named one of the 70 outstanding books from the Commonwealth chosen to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee (The Big Jubilee Read).

Her many awards include Canada’s Writers’ Trust Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, honorary doctorates from the University of the West Indies and York University and the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica.

Olive Senior lives in Toronto but returns frequently to Jamaica and the Caribbean which remain central to her work. She is the Poet Laureate of Jamaica for 2021-2024.