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Two Currents Meet in Ottawa: Mekyle Ali Qadir Launches Crescendo at Octopus Books July 7, 2026 – Posted in: Highlights, Poetry, Readings & Excerpts

Some launches announce a book; others announce a voice. The launch of Crescendo, Mekyle Ali Qadir’s debut poetry collection with Mawenzi House on June 29, 2026, at the Mauril-Bélanger Social Innovation Workshop (The Atelier) in Ottawa was firmly the latter. The evening drew more than forty readers, writers, scholars, family and friends, with thirty copies of the collection finding new shelves by night’s end. Mekyle opened with a reading of the collection’s introduction, “Two Currents,”…

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Where the River Finds Her Voice: Saraswoti Lamichhane Launches Karaikhola Flows at Audrey’s Books, Edmonton June 3, 2026 – Posted in: Highlights, Readings & Excerpts

There are book launches, and then there are evenings that feel like the land itself called them into being. The launch of Karaikhola Flows — Saraswoti Lamichhane’s debut poetry collection with Mawenzi House at Edmonton’s beloved Audrey’s Books was unmistakably the latter. Held at one of Canada’s most storied independent bookstores, the event brought together Edmonton’s literary community to celebrate a collection that has been a long time coming. Karaikhola Flows (Mawenzi House, 2026) is…

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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 2020 Highlight: Part 3 February 20, 2020 – Posted in: Highlights, Readings & Excerpts

You might recognize The Youth of God by Hassan Ghedi Santur from Canada Reads Longlist! In its telling, this novel reveals the alienated lives of Somali youth in an environment riddled with crime and unemployment, while still in the grip of bitter memories of a home left behind. Hassan emigrated from Somalia to Canada at age thirteen. He has a BA in English Literature and an MFA from York University, and an MA from Columbia…

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Black History Month 2020 Highlight: Part 2 February 11, 2020 – Posted in: Highlights, Readings & Excerpts

Nur Abdi’s debut novel, The Somali Camel Boy, tells the story of Ali who is a simple but self-willed camel boy arrested by the Duki clan. He later escapes for Toronto, where he dreams of revenge on his father’s death.  Nur grew up in the territory now known as Somaliland. In the 1980s, when a civil war was raging in Somalia, he sought refuge in Canada and became a citizen in 1994. Opposing the repressive…

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Black History Month 2020 Highlight: Part 1 February 3, 2020 – Posted in: Highlights, Readings & Excerpts

Kagiso Lesego Molope just recently won the Ottawa Book Award (English Fiction) for her YA release of This Book Betrays My Brother, which was originally published in South Africa …where it won the Percy Fitzpatrick Prize by the English Academy of Southern Africa! For her latest novel, Such a Lonely, Lovely Road, which is a story about two men coming out in South Africa, she became the inaugural winner of the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award…

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Pride Highlight: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha June 24, 2019 – Posted in: Book Recs, Highlights

More about Leah: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled femme writer and performer of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Her most recent titles are the nonfiction book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (2018) and the poetry book Tonguebreaker (2019). Her memoir Dirty River was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Publishing Triangle Award (Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction). She is also author of the poetry books Bodymap and Love…

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National Indigenous People’s Day: Featuring Joseph A. Dandurand June 20, 2019 – Posted in: Book Recs, Highlights, Holidays & Observances

In celebration of National Indigenous People’s Day, we are celebrating with Joseph A. Dandurand, and his newest book of poetry, SH:LAM (The Doctor), where he lives the experiences of an Aboriginal people brought to the edge of extinction. In the Author’s Note, Joseph says: “The poems in this collection tell the truth of what has happened to my people. The Kwantlen people used to number in the thousands, but 80% of our people were wiped…

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