Junction Reads

I am so grateful that I had this chance to sit down with Leila Marshy, @haikuboxer , author of MY THIEVERY OF THE PEOPLE from @barakabooks - You should grab a copy of this Danuta Gleed-shortlisted collection directly from the publisher or from your local independent bookstore. - Also…send your MP an email or letter demanding the decriminalization of collective action and protest!! We are not a fascist country——-or should I say, we do not WANT to be a fascist country! - @thefirstthirty

Starts at midnight. 🇵🇸 ❤️ 🇵🇸 @poetryforpalestineto @anotherstorybookshop @thetheatrecentre @alunatheatre @topalestinefilmfestival 🇵🇸 ♥️ 🇵🇸 24-hour reading of Palestinian poetry. A 24-hour reading of Palestinian poetry. From early morning (00:00) May 15th to midnight May 15th (24:00), join us for 24 hours of Palestinian poetry marking Nakba Day. This event is free. Come and go as you wish.  Join us to hear readings of vital poetry, of life and resistance. works by: Fadwa Tuqan, Dareen Tatour, Fady Joudah, Mosab Abu Toha, Mahmoud Darwish, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Hala Alyan, Refaat Al Areer, Ghassan Zaqtan, Mohammad El Kurd, Natalie Fasheh, Roula Said, Hani Morrar, Leen Amarin and Maysam Abu Khreibeh, Noor Hindi, George Abraham, Rasha Abdulhadi, Basram Aldirawi and Nassar Rabah, Maya Abou Al Hayyat and Rafeef Ziadah and many brilliant other Palestinian poets. From early morning (00:00) May 15th to midnight May 15th (24:00), join us for 24 hours of Palestinian poetry marking Nakba Day. This event is free. Come and go as you wish.  Join us to hear readings of vital poetry, of life and resistance. works by: Fadwa Tuqan, Dareen Tatour, Fady Joudah, Mosab Abu Toha, Mahmoud Darwish, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Hala Alyan, Refaat Al Areer, Ghassan Zaqtan, Mohammad El Kurd, Natalie Fasheh, Roula Said, Hani Morrar, Leen Amarin and Maysam Abu Khreibeh, Noor Hindi, George Abraham, Rasha Abdulhadi, Basram Aldirawi and Nassar Rabah, Maya Abou Al Hayyat and Rafeef Ziadah and many brilliant other Palestinian poets.

Happy Pub day!!! LAYAWAY CHILD Chanel Sutherland @csutherwrites   “I just want to breathe without feeling like I’m stealing air.”   “Time moves differently when you’re trapped between two places—here and there, now and before.”   This last quote from “Giants” will stay with me for as long as the story does – forever. A young girl walking to the Metro stalked by two police officers driving at the same speed she walks, suggesting she should do as she’s told. Do as your told, words that float above Chanel Sutherland’s stories in LAYAWAY CHILD, from opening stories where mothers, teachers and bullies remind little girls how they must be in the world, to stories where police officers, uncles, bullies and boyfriends tell girls they should obey, listen or do what’s best for the men, and the white people, around them. A reminder that women and girls, especially black girls, exist at the mercy, and judgment, of others.   The in-between-ness of girlhood, and the before and after of lives that once existed in St. Vincent, with “something of who we were” still there to welcome them home should they ever return – “Layaway Child”, the titular story close to the end of the collection, book-ends Juliette’s opening story, “Beneath The Softness Of Snow” where the choice to move to Canada isn’t a choice, really, but obliging a hopeful, better life.   The before and after of getting your first period. The before and after of abortion. The before and after of sexual abuse. The before and after of a girlhood spent trying to breathe through the worst things that happen. The women and girls in Chanel Sutherland’s collection aren’t hopelessly trapped in that in-between-ness, they quietly come alive, allowing the reader to rage on their behalf. And in the final story, “Descend,” we’re reminded that black women and girls, the boys and the men – slaves drowning “deep in the belly of the ship” – don’t only exist in the murmuring quiet of rewritten histories, they “are still here, still breathing, still alive in our stories” — like Chanel Sutherland’s. - @houseofanansi

In our conversation last Sunday, we talked about the complicated women in Liz’s, Kerry’s and Alice’s books; we talked about how women are defined by whether they are or are not a mother, and who they are when they don’t want that (even after giving birth to three kids as in THE FALL-DOWN EFFECT) or in being a complicated women who chooses a life that centres oneself before considering kids(as in Kerry Clare’s DEFINITELY THRIVING) or in being a sexual woman whose judged for it (as in Alice Fitzpatrick’s A DARK DEATH). As women struggle to exist in a world full of judgment and criticism (we never do it right) I send out love to all the daughters, because we carry so much of our mothers’ burdens - and are then judged for whether we’re doing that well enough.

How exciting that I get to chat with Leila Marshy @haikuboxer on Thursday May 14 as part of our @thefirstthirty writers’ series? A fantastic surprise that I have to go in and edit my questions: How does it feel to learn that MY THIEVERY OF THE PEOPLE, your first collection of stories, is shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Prize? I hope you’ll jump on to our Instagram Live for a conversation about writing and living in the world today.

MAY 10 at 6:00pm ET It is impossible to share a very long review because the beauty of this story is all that is withheld, all that is protected, all that is secret. - I am following Rufous through the rough landscape of his mind and memories that are both holes in the ground and tree stumps popping up all over the forest floor. While he struggles to find the treehouse from his childhood, we wonder what got him and his four siblings to the treehouse and we hope that he will remember – for whatever memories he has, they may be his last. This is an in credibly taut and perfectly plotted story about sibling love, families and how memory is both precious and painful. I can’t wait to chat with @sarahlouise.butler on Sunday. Register on Eventbrite if you want to join us. - @douglasmcintyre2013

Everyone who follows us knows the precocity of arts funding means that often we have had to pay authors a portion of the door, which is a sliver of what they deserve, and nothing that will support them as artists in this country. While we were lucky to get a TAC grant this season, we have had to stretch that money thin, and at the end of this season, Cayley, Heather and I will still not get paid. But that doesn’t matter as much as paying our authors. We are so grateful to for the support of the National Public Readings Program with funding through @thewritersunionofcanada and @canada.council

Sunday May 10 6:00pm ET 📗📘📗 Join us for a virtual reading and conversation with @sarahlouise.butler , author of RUFOUS AND CALLIOPE from @douglasmcintyre2013 📘📗📘 In Rufous and Calliope, Sarah Louise Butler takes readers deep into the rugged British Columbia Interior, where the mysteries of nature collide with the fragile threads of memory. Rufous Flanagan, a modern-day cartographer, embarks on a solo trek through an ancient mountain pass in search of the treehouse hideaway where he spent one memorable childhood summer on the run with his three older half-siblings and his twin sister, Calliope. With every step, the vast, untamed wilderness presents both a physical and emotional challenge, as Rufous must confront not only treacherous terrain, but the unravelling of his own mind. His memories—sometimes vivid, sometimes slipping away—become a map guiding him through towering forests, dry creek beds and smoke-filled skies. Yet, in this wilderness, not everything is as it seems. Echoes of the past lead Rufous on a journey that blurs the line between dream and reality. As the elements close in, this novel offers an unforgettable tale of survival, memory and the bond between siblings.” 📘📗📘 SARAH LOUISE BUTLER is a novelist based in the West Kootenay region of the BC Interior. With a background in physical geography and environmental studies, her stories seek to portray natural landscapes and their non-human inhabitants as characters in their own right. Her debut novel, The Wild Heavens, was a 49th Shelf Book of the Year, and a favourite of book clubs and libraries across the country, including being chosen as a Vancouver Public Library Top 20 Favourite Books of 2020. It was recently translated and released in France. Her second novel, Rufous and Calliope, is a “geographical fiction” that features runaway children, treehouse hideaways, early-onset dementia and the persistence of hope amidst ecological grief. Butler was named a CBC Writer to Watch in 2020. 📗📘📗 PWYC

A lovely evening listening to @kerryreads @liz.d.s.johnston and @alicefitzpatrickauthor reading from their books and sharing their thoughts on problematic female characters, writing artists, regret and mourning and figuring out how to move on. - @bookhugpress @houseofanansi @stonehousepublishing - - Thanks to @farzanadoctor for stepping in as EC while @cayleyisreading enjoys much deserved time away. - Thanks to @typebooksjunction for their support of the series. - Thank you to @canada.council @thewritersunionofcanada for their support of Liz’s reading thru the National Public Readings Program.

3 Books 3 Reviews Join us Sunday May 3 at 6:30pm at TYPE Books Junction or live thru Zoom for readings and conversation with the authors of these incredible books. Kerry Clare, Alice Fitzpatrick and Liz Johnston join Alison in conversation. http://junctionreads.ca/2026/05/02/3-books-3-reviews/

📚 Continuation & Connection: Trilogies & Short Stories An evening with three Toronto writers Wed May 20 · 6:30–8:30pm Free · RSVP required (link in bio) Join us for readings and conversation with Alison Gadsby (@ay.jay.gee / @junctionreads ), K.R. Wilson (@krwbooks ), and Heidi von Palleske (@heidivonpalleske ) as they explore the craft of writing across trilogies and short fiction. Books available for purchase. #BookPeople #TorontoEvents #CanLit #torontowriters

Review if @alicefitzpatrickauthor A DARK DEATH. Ahead of Junction Reads this Sunday May 3 @typebooksjunction 6:30pm (live-streamed) 📖 📖 If you want to understand what it means when they say, cosy mystery, A Dark Death is definitively this: a book that you could read by a fire in a little stone cottage (or in my case, under a duvet, while the rain pelts the windows). Kate Galway is a prefect middle-aged meddler, an historical fiction writer, who knows a thing or two about human behaviour. In A Dark Death, the second in the Meredith Island Mysteries, a fraudster psychic is murdered and laid naked in an archaeological dig (a fake one) where students and academics have been gathering to examine their findings. Griffin Blackstock isn’t the only person murdered, and while we’re taken on a murder mystery adventure with Kate and her friend Siobhan, we meet a slew of other characters, who are all in some manner or another carrying around a burdensome past. Alice Fitzpatrick does a great job of giving us a literary version of one of those amazing little mysteries on the BBC and in fact Kate Galway could do with her own television show because the scenery and little town setting really comes alive in the writing and all the characters enhance the mixed feelings of island living where you’re either confined by it or protected by its smallness.  - @stonehousepublishing