Event Info
The Big Idea: CanLit Unbound
Presented by Kingston WritersFest
7:00pm - 8:30pm
$0-$21.69
Event Description
The Big Idea: CanLit Unbound
Kwame Scott Fraser, Michael Hingston, Stephen Marche, Stuart Ross with Carol Off
Panel Discussion
Bellevue
7:00 – 8:30 pm
Event Sponsor:
Carol Off helms a lively discussion with a panel of independent Canadian publishers and authors about current trends in CanLit – from the evolution of the written arts with the rise of hybrid and experimental works, to the growing trend of AI-generated writing. What needs to be done to keep CanLit vital and relevant in the future, as major mergers and chatbots loom on the horizon?
Kwame Scott Fraser
“I wrote a letter to Dundurn’s founder, Kirk Howard, during my first week as interim publisher,” wrote Kwame Fraser in Publishers Weekly. “The gist of it was that I was promising to him and myself that I would work hard every day to ensure the company he founded would thrive in the future.” And thrive it has.
Dundurn Press has been a pillar of the Canadian publishing landscape for fifty years. Recently, we have seen Dundurn re-inventing itself under Scott’s new leadership, including rebranding with a new logo, the new Rare Machines imprint (a prestige literary list of adult fiction and nonfiction), a new mission statement focused on diversity and inclusion, and a new mandate.
In full, the new Dundurn mandate is as follows:
“Dundurn Press aims to publish contemporary trade fiction and non-fiction, focusing on works that amplify and elevate exceptional Canadian writers and important stories that reflect the world, satisfy curiosity, enlighten, and entertain. Our books will provide a portal into a place not yet known to the reader, where new voices and stories will be discovered. We invite readers and writers into a new home for previously underrepresented voices in our diverse cultural and literary community. Like our readers, we’re curious, courageous, and forward-thinking. Read with us. These are your stories.”
Michael Hingston
“In a world where print material is rapidly losing ground to all things digital,” says author and publisher Michael Hingston, “we remain stubborn, true believers in the power of the physical book. Our titles are driven by design and full of the unexpected—both the words on the page, and the look and feel of the page itself. We're suckers for unusual lengths, formats, perspectives, and ideas.”
One could call Michael’s interests eclectic – his bibliography includes a history of Calvin and Hobbes called Let's Go Exploring, the novel The Dilettantes, co-writer of Harnarayan Singh’s memoir One Game at a Time, as well as “the ghostwriter of some other stuff.”
Michael’s latest book is Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda, which was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. The book tells the bizarre history of Redonda - an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island that transformed into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. The Washington Post called it “wonderfully entertaining,” and Publishers Weekly described it as “a jaunty historical footnote.”
His journalism has appeared in places like National Geographic, Wired, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Hazlitt, The Walrus, and The Globe and Mail. He’s also the creator of Edmontonia Trading Cards, and the co-founder of Hingston & Olsen Publishing, the outfit responsible for the Short Story Advent Calendar and other literary experiments.
Michael lives in Edmonton.
Stephen Marche
Stephen Marche is capable of writing … any darn thing he wants.” —Globe and Mail
Stephen Marche is a journalist, cultural commentator, novelist and essayist. He is the author of nearly a dozen books, including The Next Civil War, The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the Twenty-First Century and The Hunger of the Wolf. He has written opinion pieces and essays for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Walrus and many others. He is the host of the hit audio series How Not to F*ck Up Your Kids Too Bad, and its sequel How Not to F*ck Up Your Marriage Too Bad.
His latest book is On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer - a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to what you need to continue existing as a writer, it describes the defining role played by rejection in literary endeavors and contemplates failure as the essence of the writer’s life.
Stephen caused more than a little buzz when he released the eBook novella Death of an Author earlier this year, a groundbreaking, suspenseful experiment in the meta world of man meets machine. Co-written by ‘Aidan Marchine’, the book used three artificial intelligence programs with extensive plotting and prompting from Stephen. “I am the creator of this work, 100 percent,” Marche said, “but, on the other hand, I didn’t create the words.”
Stuart Ross
“I am drawn to the weird, to the dreamlike, to the absurd,” says Stuart Ross. “I don’t think we should be constrained by the laws of the real world in our writing.”
Stuart is a prolific writer, editor, and teacher. He is the author of twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays including the novel Pockets, and the poetry collection Motel of the Opposable Thumbs. Stuart is winner of the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, the Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Jewish Fiction, The Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry, and most recently, the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature.
Stuart’s most recent title is I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub, a sometimes poignant, sometimes outrageous third story collection deepens that his exploration of the possibilities of the short story and narrative with an arsenal of pathos, absurdism, humour, and cantankerousness. Of his writing, NOW Magazine says ““Ross doesn’t waste a word, and the impact is often breathtaking. He knows how to extend a metaphor so that even the most absurd or hallucinatory episodes—and there are many of these—convey deep meaning.”
Stuart is the acquisitions editor behind the newly formed 1366 Books, home to works of accessible yet innovative and experimental fiction—works that challenge the conventions of narrative and form, and perhaps even challenge the conventions of the sentence or the page itself.
Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario, where he is working on about a dozen new books.
Carol Off
As a television and radio journalist, Carol Off has been at the heart of breaking stories on the national and international stage. She covered the fallout from 9/11, post-war reconstruction of the Balkans, and the war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia.
Carol is the author of several best-selling non-fiction titles, including The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle: A Story of Generals and Justice in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which was shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: The Story of Canada’s Secret War, which won the Dafoe Foundation Award, and most recently All We Leave Behind: A Reporter’s Journey into the Lives of Others, winner of the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction, and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Carol co-hosted CBC Radio’s As It Happens every weekday for nearly 16 years. She has long-time involvement with the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, and has won numerous awards for her media work, including a Gemini and two gold medals from the New York Festival of Television.
She lives in Toronto with her husband Linden MacIntyre, and an omniscient cat named Caversham.
In-Person Event
Sat. September 30th 2023 + Add to Calendar
Holiday Inn Kingston-Waterfront, an IHG Hotel
