Literature for Our Time is an authors’ series hosted by Nick Mount that is built into a first-year class of the same name at the University of Toronto. All events take place Fridays, 3-4 p.m. at the Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles St. West, and are open to the public. The series is sponsored by the Department of English at the University of Toronto and by Victoria University.
2020
Sara Peters, February 14, 2020
Sara Peters was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and lives in Toronto. She completed an MFA at Boston University, and was a Stegner fellow at Stanford. Her work has appeared in Slate, The Threepenny Review, and Poetry magazine. Her first book is 1996 (Anansi, 2013). We’re reading and talking about her second book, I Become a Delight to My Enemies (Strange Light, 2019).
Catherine Leroux, March 20, 2020
Catherine Leroux is a Montreal writer and translator. She is the author of three books, including Le mur mitoyen (2013), which won the France-Quebec prize and in its English translation (The Party Wall) was a finalist for the 2016 Giller prize and winner of that year’s Governor General’s award for translation. We will be reading and talking about her third and most recent book Madame Victoria (2015), winner of the Prix Adrienne-Choquette and now also translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Biblioasis, 2018).
2019
Canisia Lubrin, February 15, 2019
Canisia Lubrin has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in Arc Poetry Magazine, Room, the Puritan, This Magazine, the Globe & Mail, and elsewhere. We’re reading her first book, Voodoo Hypothesis, published in 2017 by Wolsak & Wynn. Lubrin holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and teaches at Humber College. She was born in St. Lucia and lives in Whitby, Ontario.
André Alexis, March 15 March 22, 2019
André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral, Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid & the Wolf, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, and most recently,The Hidden Keys. We’re reading his 2015 novel Fifteen Dogs (Coach House), winner of the Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
2018
Samuel Archibald, February 2, 2018
Samuel Archibald’s first collection of short stories, our featured work Arvida (Le Quartanier, 2011), won the Prix Coup de cœur Renaud-Bray and was a finalist for the Giller Prize in its English translation by Donald Winkler (Biblioasis, 2017). Samuel lives in Montreal and teaches creative writing and contemporary popular culture at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Phoebe Wang, March 16, 2018
Phoebe Wang is a Canadian poet from Ottawa. In 2015, she won the Prism International Poetry Contest. Our feature work is her debut poetry collection, Admission Requirements, published by McClelland and Stewart in 2017. Phoebe lives in Toronto and teaches poetry and writing.
2017
From 2015 to 2017, the Literature for Our Time series was hosted by Professor Denise Cruz.
David Chariandy, January 27, 2017
David Chariandy is a writer and critic who lives in Vancouver and teaches at Simon Fraser University. His first novel, Soucouyant (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007), was nominated for eleven literary prizes internationally, including the Governor General’s Award (shortlisted), the Amazon.ca / Books in Canada First Novel Award (shortlisted), the Scotiabank Giller Prize (longlisted), and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (longlisted). His second novel, Brother, is forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart.
Mona Awad, February 17, 2017
Mona Awad was born in Montreal and received her BA from York University. Her writing has appeared in Time, the Walrus, Vice, McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. Her debut novel-in-stories, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (Penguin) won the 2016 Amazon First Novel Award. She received an MA in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh and an MFA in Fiction from Brown University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Denver.
2016
Karen Solie, January 15, 2016
Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Her third book of poems, Pigeon, won the Pat Lowther Award, the Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize. Her most recent collection, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, was published in the spring in Canada by House of Anansi Press and in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. A volume of selected and new poems, The Living Option, was published in the U.K. by Bloodaxe Books in 2013. She is an associate director for the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio program and lives in Toronto.
Michaela Washburn, February 26, 2017
Michaela Washburn is proud to be of English, Irish, French and Cree descent. Born in Edmonton, this Métis artist grew up in the small town of Leduc. Her background includes theatre, film, stand-up, hosting, writing, clown, improvisation and workshop facilitation. Michaela is a four time Dora nominated artist, and was also nominated for the K. M. Hunter Artist Award for Theatre. Michaela’s performance work has taken to festivals and theatres in Wales, Aruba and across the United States.
Sachiko Murakami, March 18, 2016
Sachiko Murakami is the author of the poetry collections The Invisibility Exhibit (Talon Books 2008), Rebuild (Talon Books 2011) and Get Me Out Of Here (Talon Books 2015). She has created several online collaborative poetry projects including projectrebuild.ca, whenihavethebodyofaman.com and figureoracle.com (with angela rawlings). She has been a literary worker for numerous presses, journals, and organizations, and currently sits on the poetry editorial board at Talon Books. She lives in Toronto.
2015
Chris Hanratty & Shira Leuchter of 
Unspun Theatre, February 13, 2015
Based here in Toronto, UnSpun has been creating entertaining, award-winning work since 2004. Our visitors are UnSpun’s artistic director Chris Hanratty and creative director Shira Leuchter.
Souvankham Thammavongsa, March 13, 2015
Souvankham Thammavongsa has written three poetry books–Small Arguments (2003), Found (2007), and Light (2013)–all published by Pedlar Press in Canada. Of her most recent collection Light, the Globe and Mail said “[t]his new collection confirms Thammavongsa’s place as one of the most interesting younger poets at work in the country,” and the Trillium Book Award jury, awarding her the prize for poetry, called the collection “a landmark in contemporary poetry.”
2014
Gary Shteyngart, January 31, 2014
Born in Leningrad, Gary Shteyngart moved to the United States in 1980. We’re reading his third novel, Super Sad True Love Story (Random House, 2010), a top pick of the year for the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and many others. Gary has been selected as one of Granta’s best young American novelists and by the New Yorker as one of the 20 best American fiction writers under 40. He lives in New York City.
Lynn Crosbie, February 14, 2014
Montreal-born Lynn Crosbie is the author of two novels and five books of poetry, including Queen Rat, Liar, and our featured work, Missing Children (McClelland & Stewart, 2003). Her most recent book is a blend of fiction and memoir called Life Is About Losing Everything, published by Anansi in 2012. Lynn lives in Toronto.
2013
Miriam Toews, February 8, 2013
Born in Steinbach, Manitoba, Miriam Toews now lives in Toronto after sojourns in Montreal, London, Winnipeg, and Halifax. She is the author of five novels as well as a memoir. We’re reading her third novel, A Complicated Kindness (Knopf Canada, 2004), winner of the Governor General’s Award for 2004 and Canada Reads in 2006.
Zsuzsi Gartner, February 15, 2013
Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of two critically acclaimed collections of short stories, the editor of Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow, and the winner of a National Magazine Award for Fiction. We’re reading her second collection of short stories, Better Living through Plastic Explosives (Hamish-Penguin, 2011), a Giller Prize finalist. Zsuzsi lives in Vancouver.
John K. Samson, March 22, 2013
John K. Samson is the singer and lyricist for The Weakerthans. His poetry and prose have appeared in Matrix Magazine, Geist, The Believer, and Post-Prairie: An Anthology of New Poetry. We’re reading his first book, Lyrics and Poems, 1997-2012 (ARP, 2012). John lives in Winnipeg, where he is also the managing editor and co-founder of Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
2012
Heather O’Neill, February 10, 2012
Heather O’Neill’s first job was selling flowers on a Montreal street corner with her sisters. Since then she’s published a book of poems, written a short story that became a movie, and given thousands of readers a new favourite novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals (HarperCollins, 2006), winner of Canada Reads for 2007 and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
Michael Winter, March 2, 2012
Michael Winter was born in England, grew up in Corner Brook, learned to write in St. John’s, and now consents to reside in Toronto. He is the author of two collections of short stories and four novels, the most recent of which, The Death of Donna Whalen, was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. We’re featuring his third novel, The Architects Are Here (Penguin, 2007), about best friends on a road trip from Toronto back to Corner Brook with a stuffed fox, a hitchhiking dog, and a Taser in the trunk.
Michael Lista, March 2, 2012
Michael Lista is a Canadian essayist and poet who has been twice shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize. We’re reading his first book, Bloom (Anansi, 2010), poems in the style and sometimes the words of other poets that tell us, among other things, how a nuclear physicist from Winnipeg lived, loved, and died. Michael lives in Toronto, where he’s poetry editor for the Walrus.
2011
Lisa Moore, February 11, 2011
Lisa Moore’s acclaimed first collection of short stories was reprinted by House of Anansi after the stunning success of her Giller-nominated second collection, our featured work Open (Anansi, 2002). Her first novel, Alligator, was also nominated for the Giller Prize and won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her most recent novel, February, was long-listed for the Booker Prize. Lisa Moore was born and now lives again in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
David McGimpsey, March 11, 2011
Montrealer David McGimpsey is the uncrowned poet laureate of North American popular culture. The author of four books of poetry—most recently our featured collection Sitcom (Coach House, 2007)—McGimpsey’s insights into society’s guilty pleasures have won accolades from reviewers on both sides of the border. He teaches creative writing for Concordia, and writes about sandwiches for EnRoute.
Andrew Pyper, March 18, 2011
Andrew Pyper published his first book, the short-story collection Kiss Me, in 1996. He has since published four best-selling, critically acclaimed novels: Lost Girls, The Trade Mission, The Wildfire Season, The Guardians, and our featured work The Killing Circle (Doubleday, 2008), a New York Times Notable Crime Novel about a would-be writer who plagiarizes a horror story about a faceless serial killer only to find that the story is coming true. Pyper lives in Toronto, where the Killing Circle meets.
2010
Lynn Crosbie, January 29, 2010
Montreal-born Lynn Crosbie is the author of five books of poetry, including Queen Rat, Missing Children, and our featured work, Liar (Anansi, 2006), a confessional poem about the mother of all breakups. She is also the author of two controversial novels, Paul’s Case, based on the Bernardo-Homolka sex crimes, and Dorothy L’Amour, inspired by the murder of Playmate Dorothy Stratten. Crosbie writes the “Pop Rocks” column for the Globe and Mail.
Stephen Marche, March 5, 2010
Stephen Marche published his first novel in 2005, the long-distance, digital love story of Raymond and Hannah. Our featured work is Marche’s second book, the anthology of an imaginary island nation called Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (Viking Canada, 2007). The New York Times Book Review called it “Maybe the most exciting mashup of literary genres since David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.” Marche lives in Toronto and is a columnist for the National Post and Esquire.
Jon McGregor, March 19, 2010
Born in Bermuda, British author Jon McGregor landed in Nottingham, where he wrote his first and our featured novel, the story of one street somewhere in the North of England. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (Bloomsbury, 2002) made McGregor the youngest contender and the only first novelist for the 2002 Booker Prize. It won the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been selected by Waterstone’s Books as one of their top 100 books of the last 25 years.
2009
Karen Hines, February 6, 2009
Karen Hines is an award-winning Canadian writer, director, and performer in film, television and theatre. A Second City alumna, she’s best known as the creator of one of the most memorable characters ever to pout from a Canadian stage: the sexy, psychotic, mercury-poisoned Pochsy. “Imagine,” says the Montreal Herald, “Greek tragedy by Betty Boop.” That’s The Pochsy Plays (Coach House, 2004).
Karen Solie, March 6, 2009
Born in Moosejaw, raised in southwest Saskatchewan, Karen Solie won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and was short-listed for the world’s largest poetry prize, the Griffin, for her first book. Our featured collection is her second book, Modern and Normal (Brick, 2005), written mostly since her move to Toronto and torn between tractor memories and streetcar knowledge. The Globe and Mail called it the work of “one of the best poets of her generation.”
Sam Lipsyte, March 20, 2009
Sam Lipsyte is the former frontman for the noise-rock band Dungbeetle and the current Director of Creative Writing at Columbia University. Our featured work is Lipsyte’s wickedly funny, wickedly smart second novel Home Land (Picador, 2004), a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the first annual Believer Book Award. A taste: “Some nights I picture myself naked, covered in napalm, running down the street. But then it’s not napalm. It’s apple butter. And it’s not a street. It’s my mother.”
2007
Camilla Gibb, February 2, 2007
Born in London, raised in Toronto, read around the world: Camilla Gibb, says Britain’s Orange Prize Committee, is one of the twenty-one writers to watch in the twenty-first century. Her most recent novel, Sweetness in the Belly, was a Giller finalist and won the Trillium Award. Our featured work is Gibb’s second novel, The Petty Details of So-and-So’s Life (Doubleday, 2002), a Globe and Mail Best Book Selection that follows a dysfunctional family from Niagara Falls to Hell, or maybe Salt Spring Island.
Ken Babstock, March 23, 2007
Ken Babstock is probably the most acclaimed Canadian poet of his generation. Praised by poets from Dennis Lee in Canada to Simon Armitage in Britain, quoted by indie bands like The Rheostatics and The Deadly Snakes, Babstock writes what Lee calls “poetry with heart, purpose, killer images, craft to burn.” Our featured collection, his debut book Mean (Anansi, 1999), won the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Prize.
Chris Ware, March 30, 2007
Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2000) is the first graphic novel to win a major British literary award and the first book of any kind to be included in the Whitney Biennial of American Art. Jimmy Corrigan won the Manchester Guardian First Book Award, an American Book Award, and the French Prix de la critique. It is a brilliant, haunting leviathan of a book, a Ulysses for our time.
2006
Hiromi Goto, February 3, 2006
Hiromi Goto won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for her first book, the novel Chorus of Mushrooms. Our featured novel The Kappa Child (Red Deer, 2001) was nominated for the Sunburst Award for Canadian fantasy literature and won the annual s/f and fantasy James Tiptree Jr. Award. Born in Japan, Goto immigrated to Canada with her family and now lives outside Vancouver, British Columbia.
Richard Powers, March 17, 2006
Named one of the five writers of the decade by Esquire magazine, Richard Powers writes novels that, like our featured novel Plowing the Dark (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), draw on current science as well as a deep attraction to music, art, and history. Powers is a three-time nominee for the National Book Critics Circle award and a recipient of the MacArthur genius award. He lives in Illinois, where he teaches at the University of Illinois.
David McGimpsey, March 31, 2006
Montrealer David McGimpsey is the uncrowned poet laureate of North American popular culture. His insights into society’s guilty pleasures in books like our featured poetry collection, Hamburger Valley, California (ECW, 2001), and Imagining Baseball: America’s Favourite Pastime, which won the Popular Culture Association’s award for Best Scholarly Study, have won accolades from reviewers on both sides of the border. McGimpsey teaches creative writing at Concordia University.
2005
Mark Kingwell, January 14, 2005
Philosopher Mark Kingwell alternates his publications in scholarly journals with award-winning observations on contemporary culture for magazines like Adbusters, Harper’s, Shift, Maclean’s, Toro, and This Magazine. Since the mid-1990s he has published eight books, including Dreams of Millennium: Report from a Culture on the Brink (Viking, 1996), Better Living: In Pursuit of Happiness from Plato to Prozac (Viking, 1998), The World We Want: Virtue, Vice, and the Good Citizen (Viking,2000), and Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life (Viking, 2003). His work has been translated into eight languages.
Lynn Crosbie, February 25, 2005
Hailed by Books in Canada as “the strongest new voice in poetry this country has seen in a decade,” Montreal-born Lynn Crosbie is the author of five books of poetry, including Queen Rat (Anansi, 1998), Missing Children (McClelland & Stewart, 2003), and the massive Phoebe 2002 (Turtle Point, 2003), co-written with Jeffery Conway and David Trinidad. She is also the author of two controversial novels, Paul’s Case: The Kingston Letters (Insomniac, 1997), based on the Bernardo-Homolka sex crimes, and Dorothy L’Amour (HarperCollins, 1999), inspired by the murder of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. Crosbie is a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.
Motion, April 1, 2005
Motion is a Toronto spoken word poet, hip hop artist, and literacy advocate whose recordings have appeared in several hip hop compilations as well as on Much Music and Vibe. A frequent MC and performer on both sides of the border, Motion won the CBC National Poetry Face-Off in 2002 and was recently nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award. She is also the co-founder of The Masterplan Show on CIUT 89.5fm, an award-winning showcase for Canadian hip hop. In 2002 Motion released Motion in Poetry (Women’s Press), the first book of poetry by a Canadian hip hop artist.
2004
Eden Robinson, February 27, 2004
Eden Robinson is a young First Nations (Haisla) author from British Columbia. Her first book, the tough-minded short-story collection Traplines (Knopf, 1996), won the Winifred Holtby Prize for the best work of fiction in the Commonwealth, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book of the Year. Her second is Monkey Beach (Knopf, 2000), a haunting novel about the connections between the living and the dead. Monkey Beach was a Globe and Mail Editor’s Choice and a Giller Prize finalist.
Seth, March 19, 2004
The most sought after artist of his kind in Canada, Seth’s work has appeared in The Wall St. Journal, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Details, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken (Drawn & Quarterly, 1996) is a “picture novella” about a Toronto cartoonist on a quest for a forgotten New Yorker artist of the 1940s and ‘50s. It’s a Good Life has been selected as one of the hundred best comics of the 20th century by the editors of Comics Journal, and is the first Canadian graphic novel to follow in the path of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World and make the crossover from cult status to mainstream praise.
David McGimpsey, April 2, 2004
Montrealer David McGimpsey is the uncrowned poet laureate of North American popular culture. The author of three books of poetry—Lardcake, Dogboy, and, most recently, Hamburger Valley, California (ECW)—that collect what Books in Canada called “miracles of comic timing,” McGimpsey’s insights into society’s guilty pleasures have won accolades from reviewers on both sides of the border, from the Halifax Herald to the Washington Post. He is also the author of Imagining Baseball: America’s Favourite Pastime (Indiana UP, 2000), winner of the Popular Culture Association’s award for Best Scholarly Study, and a songwriter and musician whose band Puggy Hammer is about to release its debut CD, Rock Like Idiots.