5 CARIBBEAN CANADIAN AUTHORS TO KNOW February 25, 2021 – Posted in: Highlights

Olive Senior is the Toronto-based Jamaican author of 18 works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children’s literature. Her widely taught, widely translated works have won her many awards, including the Matt Cohen Award, the Musgrave Medal, and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her stories, set in rural and urban Jamaica, are celebrated for their humour and musicality, haunting use of history and folklore, and rich characters, many of them children coming to terms with…

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5 AFRICAN CANADIAN AUTHORS TO KNOW February 20, 2021 – Posted in: Highlights

Kagiso Lesego Molope is a South African writer who lives in Ottawa. Her novels, set in the South Africa of the 1990s and afterwards, bear witness to the legacies of apartheid and are studied in schools across South Africa. Her best-known book, the young adult novel This Book Betrays My Brother, won a Percy FitzPatrick Award and an Ottawa Book Award. and was named to best-of lists by Kirkus Reviews, the Globe and Mail, CBC, and the Chicago Public Library. WHAT TO READ: Awumey is a Togolese-Canadian writer…

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Black History Month Features February 16, 2021 – Posted in: Highlights, Holidays & Observances

To mark Black History Month, we highlight a selection of Mawenzi House titles that play with the anthology form to celebrate the plurality and polyphony of Black culture, Black creativity, and Black lives.

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I Was a Teenage Beauty Pageant Loser February 15, 2021 – Posted in: Readings & Excerpts

Natasha Ramoutar, author of Bittersweet, recently wrote for The Walrus about her experience participating in a beauty pageant as a teenager. Here’s a short excerpt of the piece.

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The question we all should really be asking this February February 9, 2021 – Posted in: Readings & Excerpts

Elizabeth Vaah, author of Maame, wrote a blog post for TD Stories, discussing how we should approach Black History Month in 2021. Here’s a short excerpt of the piece.