If you love meeting talented writers and hearing them read from their published work, or just want to soak up a unique cultural experience, don’t miss the opportunity to attend the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series, which launches its 2022-23 season on Sept. 20.

The series features 11 authors who will present their work and answer questions. Copies of all books can be found in the York University Bookstore or at a local bookseller. Canadian Writers in Person is a for-credit course for students. Readings are free and open to members of the public and members of the York community not enrolled in the course. 

All readings take place online via Zoom at 7 p.m. on select Tuesday evenings. 

The lineup consists of a unique selection of award-winning Canadian writers and nominees, who explore a broad range of topics, and a variety of geographical and cultural landscapes. Featuring seasoned and emerging poets and fiction writers, the series highlights Canada’s ever-growing literary talent. 

On, Sept. 20, Pulitzer prize-winning author Jack Wang kicks off the 2022-23 series with a reading from We Two Alone.  

Set on five continents and spanning nearly a century, We Two Alone traces the long arc and evolution of the Chinese immigrant experience. A young laundry boy risks his life to play organized hockey in Canada in the 1920s. A Canadian couple gets caught in the outbreak of violence in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Consul-General of China attempts to save lives following Kristallnacht in Vienna. A family aspires to buy a home in South Africa during the rise of apartheid. An actor in New York struggles to keep his career alive while yearning to reconcile with his estranged wife. From the vulnerable and disenfranchised to the educated and elite, the characters in this extraordinary collection embody the diversity of the diaspora at key moments in history and in contemporary times.  

Wang has crafted deeply affecting stories that not only subvert expectations but contend with mortality and delicately draw out the intimacies and failings of love.

Other presentations scheduled in this series are:

Oct. 4: Sheung-King, You Are Eating an Orange, You Are Naked 
Oct. 25: Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, The Son of the House 
Nov. 8: Katherena Vermette, The Strangers 
Nov. 22: Pik-Shuen Fung, Ghost Forest 
Dec. 6: David Bradford, Dream of No One but Myself 

2023 

Jan. 17: Iain Reid, We Spread 
Jan. 31: Tolu Oloruntoba, Each One a Furnace 
Feb. 14: Casey Plett, A Dream of a Woman 
March 7: Liz Howard, Letters in a Bruised Cosmos 
March 21: Omar El Akkad, What Strange Paradise

Canadian Writers in Person is a course offered out of the Culture & Expression program in the Department of Humanities in York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. 

A Zoom link will be made available a week before the reading. Additional information is available online or by emailing Gail Vanstone gailv@yorku.ca.

Originally published in YFile.