The Alchemy Lecture is a multi-vocal model that brings together a constellation of thinkers and practitioners from different disciplines and geographies annually to think together and in public on the most pressing issues of our times.
Sound—at the Interregnum
Four Alchemists. One Lecture.
A Constellation of Ideas.
Date: October 30, 2025
The Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, and York University are proud to be hosting the Fourth Annual Alchemy Lecture, Sound—at the Interregnum.
Each lecture culminates in the publication of a book bearing the title of that year's convening in the imprint, headed by Dionne Brand, Alchemy by Knopf. Along with the inclusion of an introduction, each book extends the public lecture and builds on its alchemical form. These lectures (and the book that will result from them) speak into the interregnum of precipitous climate catastrophe and social and political reckoning. The previous lectures, including last year’s The City of Our Dreaming, are available for purchase from the York University Book Store in the lobby. The book from this year’s lecture will be published in September 2026 and will be available for purchase then and at next year’s lecture.
Hosted by Christina Sharpe – Professor, Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities, Ravi de Costa – Associate Dean of LA&PS, Janice Anderson – Assistant Professor, Trent University, Research Associate, Alchemy Lecture, Sheba Wiafe – PhD Student, SPTH, York University and Ola Mohammed – Assistant Professor, Humanities, York University.
Moderator: Christina Sharpe
Christina Sharpe is a writer, Professor, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto. Sharpe is the author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (2010), In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016), and Ordinary Notes (2023)—winner of the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize in Nonfiction and the Hodler Prize, and finalist for The National Book Award in Nonfiction, The National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Current Interest Book Award, and the James Tait Black Prize in Biography. In 2024, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in Nonfiction, was named a Guggenheim Fellow, and received the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize for the Sciences and Humanities. In 2025 she was named a Killam Prize winner. Sharpe is currently working on What Could a Vessel Be? (FSG/Knopf, Canada 2027) and Black. Still. Life. (Duke 2027). Her writing has appeared in many artist catalogues and journals including Frieze, Paris Review, Harpers, BOMB Magazine, and The Funambulist.
Speakers
Glen Coulthard
(Yellowknives Dene/Canada), Scholar of Indigenous Studies
Glen Coulthard is Yellowknives Dene and an associate professor in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program and the Departments of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Frantz Fanon Award for Outstanding Book, the Canadian Political Science Association’s CB Macpherson Award for Best Book in Political Theory, published in English or French, in 2014/2015, and the Rik Davidson Studies in Political Economy Award for Best Book in 2016. He is also a co-founder of Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, a decolonial, Indigenous land-based post-secondary program operating on his traditional territories in Denendeh (Northwest Territories).
Photo credit ©️ Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Canisia Lubrin
(St. Lucia/Canada) Poet
Canisia Lubrin is the author of five books, including Voodoo Hypothesis, The Dyzgraphxst, The World After Rain (2025), and Code Noir. Her honours include a 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Griffin Poetry Prize, Derek Walcott Prize, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Lubrin has been twice a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. She is the coordinator of the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA and poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. Code Noir, her fiction debut, winner of the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, has 59 drawings by celebrated visual artist Torkwase Dyson.
Photo credit ©️ Andrew Querner
Madeleine Thien
(Canada) Novelist
Madeleine Thien is the author of a story collection Simple Recipes (2001), and four novels, including Dogs at the Perimeter (2011), Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016) and The Book of Records (2025). Do Not Say We Have Nothing was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Folio Prize, and won the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, among other honours. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages, and her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. As a librettist, she created Chinatown, a full-length opera by Alice Ping Yee Ho and Paul Yee; and collaborates on a range of chamber works. She was a 2021-22 Cullman Fellow at The New York Public Library; and in 2024, received the Engel-Findley Award, honouring a writer in mid-career, from the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Born in Vancouver, Madeleine lives in Montreal and teaches part-time at Brooklyn College at The City University of New York.
Photo credit ©️ Joshua Woods
Immanuel Wilkins
(US) Saxophonist, Composer, Arranger
Saxophonist, composer and educator Immanuel Wilkins burst onto the musical scene in 2020 with his Blue Note debut, Omega which was named the best jazz release of 2020 by the New York Times. Constantly seeking out creative connections within and outside the world of Jazz, Wilkins has worked with filmmakers Cauleen Smith & Ja’Tovia Gary; the sculptrice Kennedy Yanko; the painter Leslie Hewitt and the interdisciplinary artist, Theaster Gates. These collaborations have played a decisive role in his ever-expanding aesthetic vision. In 2022, Wilkins released his sophomore album on Blue Note, The 7th Hand. Like his debut release, it topped numerous year-end lists. In 2023, Wilkins was awarded with three Downbeat Critics Poll Awards including Best Alto Saxophonist and in 2024 his quartet won the prize for best international live act by the Deutscher Jazz Preis. In Fall 2024 Wilkins released his 3rd and arguably his most adventurous recording to date: Blues Blood. Co-produced by Meshell Ndegeocello, Wilkins latest album features his quartet along with vocalists Yay Agyeman, Ganavya and June McDoom and special guests: Cécile McLorin Savant, Chris Dave and Marvin Sewell. Blues Blood was nominated for best international recording of the year by the Deutscher Jazz Preiss and the Edison Jazz in the Netherlands and was among the 3 finalists for the L’Académie de Jazz’s “Prix Évidence." In 2024, Immanuel was also honored by the editors of Jazz News and Jazz Magazine as the best international jazz musician of the year.
Our Partners
- SA Smythe and The Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis at University of Toronto
- Trent University, Office of the Dean, Humanities and Social Sciences
- English Department, Trent University
- Grace Ngugi and Madina Agénor
- Dionne Brand, Editorial Director, Alchemy by Knopf
- Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities
- York Research Chair in Linguistic Diversity & Community Vitality
- The School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph
- Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies
- Rinaldo Walcott and The Carl V Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies, University at Buffalo
- Natalie Diaz and Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, Arizona State University
- David Chariandy, Department of English, University of Toronto
- Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora
- Department of English
- Leslie Sanders, Professor Emerita, Department of Humanities
- Black Canadian Studies
- Social and Political Thought
- Humanities, Faculty of Graduate Studies
- The Office of the President
- The Office of the Dean, LA&PS
- Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change
- Andrea Davis, Associate Vice-President: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Wilfrid Laurier University
- Canisia Lubrin
- The Butterfield Family Foundation
- Kate Schapira
- International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation
