Upcoming Events › Regular Onstage Event

Join us for a spectacular evening of elevated conversation when two-time Giller Prize shortlist nominee and winner of the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Rawi Hage, presents his brilliant new novel, Beirut Hellfire Society. Returning to the territory first imagined in his debut novel, De Niro’s Game, the novel combines comedy and tragedy and serves as “an urgent meditation on what it is to love through war.” Rawi reads and shares his thoughts with master interviewer Eric Friesen. Cash bar. Media…

When does love cross the line into obsession? Can we pinpoint the moment that irrevocably shapes the person that we become? Join short-form authors Paige Cooper and Adrian Michael Kelly as they discuss their debut short-fiction collections and explore the relationships of fathers and sons, scientists and their inventions, star-crossed lovers and estranged kin. Acclaimed short-fiction author, editor, and anthologist John Metcalf, currently the fiction editor at Biblioasis, leads the conversation. Bellevue Room 2:00 - 3:00 pm Advance GA $20 Senior $18…

In her newest novel, award-winning author Merilyn Simonds writes about a mature woman living on a remote island. Celebrated poet Lorna Crozier, hailed by Ursula K. Le Guin as a "storyteller, truth-teller, and visionary" is a mature woman living on a remote island. Together, they share snippets of their new work and unpack a lifetime of stories, rendered in prose and poetry. They provide deep insight, humour, wisdom, and answers to life’s most challenging questions, possible only when one reaches “a certain age.”…

Anna Porter, Phyllis Bruce, and John Metcalf collectively have edited or published an astonishing list of Canlit giants. With Hal Wake, these dedicated cultural workers reminisce about the golden age of Canadian publishing and reflect on what the future holds for contemporary Canadian writers and publishers. Can we and should we keep alive the canon of Canadian books and authors? How do we then give space to emerging writers, especially those who push the boundaries of what we might recognize as a Canadian…

Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled, due to unforeseen circumstances. We apologize for the inconvenience.  Patrick Lane, prolific, award-winning poet and novelist, makes his first appearance at Kingston WritersFest with Deep River Night, a novel set post-WWII in a remote sawmill community in BC’s interior. Patrick reads and chats with author Wayne Grady about human frailty, both psychological and physical, and shares how his own health challenges helped him to understand the damaged character of his protagonist, veteran Art Kenning, a first-aid…

An extraordinary opportunity to hear one of Canada’s most renowned and accomplished poets in conversation with an exciting debut poet. Dionne Brand is an essayist and writer of short and long-form fiction, but her most recent work is poetry collection The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica in 59 Versos. Canisia Lubrin presents her debut collection Voodoo Hypothesis. Together they explore memory, language, culture, literary trends, and time, and the relationships between the artist and the world, and between the artist and art.     Bellevue 1:00 - 2:00 pm Advance GA…

Giller-winning author Esi Edugyan presents Washington Black, a fearful 11-year-old field slave in Barbados who is lifted into a world of imagination and freedom by a mysterious explorer and abolitionist, brother to Wash’s vicious owner. Esi is joined by Amazon.ca First Novel Award winner Wayne Grady. He presents Up From Freedom, about an American white man’s hunt for his son, born to an enslaved mother, when the boy runs away through a country in turmoil. A conversation about seeing each other as human, no matter our differences.  Moderated by Lawrence Scanlan. Bellevue 2:30 - 3:30 pm Advance GA $20 Senior $18 / Festival GA $22 Senior $20

In journalist Elizabeth Renzetti’s insightful and deliciously witty essay collection Shrewed, she writes: “To be a feminist woman is to walk around, daily, confronted with your empowerment and your diminishment at the hands of others.” Elizabeth shares the personal and the political: from how she responds to her son’s innocent question, “do you know any feminists?” to the uphill battle for women in politics, to her unforgettable experiences among pussyhat-wearing millennials and placard-bearing octogenarians during the 2017 Women’s March on Washington.  Media Sponsor: FLY FM Bellevue 4:00 - 5:00 pm Advance GA $20 Senior $18 / Festival GA $22 Senior $20

We celebrate David Chariandy’s remarkable early career; his debut novel Soucouyant received 11 award nominations, including the Governor General's Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His second novel, Brother, described by the Guardian as “an exquisite Canadian novel about growing up in a poor immigrant neighbourhood of danger and futile dreams” won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. With his first creative non-fiction work, I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter, David addresses his teenager’s questions about the politics of race and her own heritage. Moderated by Aara…

Can kindness be taught? Brian Goldman, host of CBC’s White Coat, Black Art traversed the globe to investigate cutting-edge science on kindness. Brian subjected himself to tests and scans of all kinds, attempting to allay his fear that he’d lost the attribute of kindness or maybe never had it. With the growing propensity in all of us to lack empathy and compassion in the face of suffering, and an inability to see “the other” as human, Brian talks with Mike Condra about the important repercussions of this trend.   Bellevue 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Advance GA $20 Senior $18 / Festival…

Movie-worthy suspense and atmosphere, plot twists, and characters that will keep you awake at night and just give you the icks, from authors Nathan Ripley, Iain Reid, and Elisabeth de Mariaffi. Join Kingston Canadian Film Festival director Marc Garniss, as he gets the inside track on the growth of “griplit” as a genre and how easily it lends itself to adaptation for TV or film and finds out how perfectly nice people can write such perfectly scary stuff!   Event sponsor: Chris James Media Sponsor: 98.9 The Drive A…

Waubgeshig Rice brings us Moon of the Crusted Snow, a thriller that strikes the reader first with the subtle, unremarkable line of catastrophe - the moment that life as we know it changes - and then brings home the realization that something terrible has happened. As the routine of their remote Anishinaabe community collapses, Waub's characters respond as best they can to the growing urgency of survival, and must adapt or perish. With Brent Bellamy, Waub talks about what happens after apocalypse and…

Sexism, racism, intolerance, and dehumanization are most often instigated by men, often young men. With a worldwide resurgence of white supremacy, demonization and persecution of refugees and immigrants, and continuing inequality and sexual abuse of women, it is urgent that we identify the overarching problem and seek solutions. Join Daemon Fairless (Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men), Rachel Giese (Boys: What It Means to Become a Man), and Jamil Jivani (Why Young Men: Rage, Race, and the Crisis of Identity) in this critical discussion. Moderated by Carol Off.   Event Sponsor: The Walrus  Bellevue Room 6:30 - 8:30 pm Advance GA…

Food can evoke a cultural identity but can also become a shorthand for cultural clichés or an avenue of appropriation.  Author Naben Ruthnum’s witty book  Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race meditates on how that blend of spices monolithically known as curry actually varies district to district and cook to cook, and is sometimes conflated in Western understanding with Indian culture itself.  Joining Naben is The Globe and Mail's National Food Reporter Ann Hui, who writes about food issues, including the relationships between food and culture.  Islandview 9:30 -…

Journalist Michael Barclay spent years on the road, following and writing about The Tragically Hip and their music. Kingston natives, the band sold millions of records and defined a generation of the band, their music, peers, opening acts, naming as members of the Order of Canada for the members’ contributions to Canadian culture, and their stunning Man Machine Poem tour, watched by millions worldwide, and culminating in an unforgettable performance in Kingston’s Market Square. Moderated by Sideshow. Media Sponsor: KROCK 105.7 Bellevue 11:00…

Award-winning non-fiction author  Katherine Ashenburg presents a fictionalized account of the wives of two famous Swedish artists, the women’s ambitions and talents, and the boundaries of ambition and friendship. Award-winning author Helen Helen Humphreys presents the story of famed fly tyer Megan Boyd, a reclusive Scotswoman who builds a solitary life doing what she feels called to do. Katherine and Helen chat with Bill Richardson about these extraordinary women and their distinctive stories of creativity, industry, and home. Islandview 12:30 - 1:30 pm Advance GA $20 Senior $18 / Festival GA $22 Senior $20