Closing Night of VERSeFest

Plan 99 presents the closing event of VERSeFest's Spring 2025 Festival, featuring Bridget Huh, Sara Berkeley, and Stephanie Roberts!

More details and tickets at verseottawa.ca

Sucker Punch with Scaachi Koul

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Scaachi Koul's latest book, Sucker Punch:

Scaachi Koul’s first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the issues of race, body image, love, friendship, and growing up the daughter of immigrants. When the time came to start writing her next book, Scaachi assumed she’d be updating her story with essays about her elaborate four-day wedding, settling down to domestic bliss, and continuing her never-ending arguments with her parents. Instead, the Covid pandemic hit, the world went into lockdown, Scaachi’s marriage fell apart, she lost her job, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

Sucker Punch  is about what happens when the life you thought you’d be living radically changes course, everything you thought you knew about the world and yourself has tilted on its axis, and you have to start forging a new path forward.

More details and tickets at writersfestival.org

Book Launch for Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre

As Canada heads towards a pivotal election, bestselling author Mark Bourrie charts the rise of Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre and considers the history and potential cost of the politics of division.

Six weeks into the Covid pandemic, New York Times columnist David Brooks identified two types of Western politicians: rippers and weavers. Rippers, whether on the right or the left, see politics as war. They don’t care about the destruction that’s caused as they fight for power. Weavers are their opposite: people who try to fix things, who want to bring people together and try to build consensus. At the beginning of the pandemic, weavers seemed to be winning.

In Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, bestselling author Mark Bourrie, winner of the Charles Taylor Prize, charts Poilievre’s rise through the political system, from teenage volunteer to outspoken Opposition leader known for cutting soundbites and theatrics. Bourrie shows how we arrived at this divisive moment in our history, one in which rippers are poised to capitalize on conflict.

Free tickets for this limited seating event are available here

Book Launch for At the Trough

Local author Laurent Carbonneau offers a searing critique of Canada’s long-standing reliance on corporate subsidies with his book At the Trough: The Rise and Rise of Canada's Corporate Welfare Bums. Join us for the book launch of this timely call to action, wherein the author urges Canadians to demand a fairer, more prosperous economy designed for the public good, not corporate interests.

Born and Razed Book Launch

Join author Beth Granger for the launch of Born and Razed: Surviving the Cult Was Only Half the Battle, a story of recovery from religious abuse, and the road to holding the abusers accountable.

Carleton University Presents: A Half-Built Garden with Ruthanna Emrys

Carleton University’s Climate Commons presents an author reading and discussion on A Half-Built Garden.

A literary descendent of Ursula K. Le Guin, Ruthanna Emrys has crafted a novel of extraterrestrial diplomacy and urgent climate repair bursting with quiet, tenuous hope and an underlying warmth. A Half-Built Garden depicts a world worth building towards, a humanity worth saving from itself, and an alien community worth cautiously entering into dialogue with. It's not the easiest future to build, but it's one that just might be in reach.

Reserve your free ticket here!

Poetry Bash with House of Anansi!

Ottawa Writers Festival celebrates Poetry Month and another year of stellar poetry from House of Anansi Press with performances from four poets reading from their new collections:

-Great Silent Ballad by AF Moritz
-The Seated Woman by Clémence Dumas-Côté (translated by E.S. Taillon)
-Shadow Price by Farah Ghafoor
-Wellwater by Karen Solie

Free tickets for this limited seating events are available at https://writersfestival.org/

Book Launch for I Remember Lights

Come out for the book launch for Ottawa’s own Ben Ladouceur, presented by Ottawa Writers Festival in partnership with Library and Archives Canada and the Ottawa Public Library! Hosted by Dave Currie.

Ladouceur’s anticipated debut novel, I Remember Lights depicts a time when the world promised everything to everyone, however irresponsibly. This book is a vital reminder of forgotten history and a visceral exploration of the details of queer life: tribulation and joy, exile and solidarity, cruelty and fortitude.

Free tickets for this limited seating events are available at writersfestival.org