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  • NAC Indigenous Book Club with author Joshua Whitehead

    NAC (National Arts Centre)
    Rossy Pavilion

    Tuesday Jun 11, 2024 at 7:00pm
     minutes
    Register

    In partnership with the National Arts Centre (NAC), the Ottawa Public Library (OPL) is hosting an Indigenous Book Club for National Indigenous History Month featuring book of essays Making Love with the Land. On June 11 at 7pm, join us for this conversation with author Joshua Whitehead (Oji-Cree - Peguis First Nation) to discuss the book and connect directly with the author and other readers.

    Borrow a copy today: Making Love With the Land | Ottawa Public Library | BiblioCommons

    About the Book
    Making Love with the Land is a startling, challenging, uncompromising look at what it means to live as an Indigenous person “in the rupture” between identities. In these ten unique, heart-piercing non-fiction pieces, award-winning writer Joshua Whitehead illuminates the com­plex moment we’re living through now, in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new and old ideas about “the land.” He asks: What is our relationship and responsi­bility towards it? And how has the land shaped ideas, histories, words, our very bodies?

    About the Author
    Joshua Whitehead (he/him) is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary where he is housed in the departments of English and International Indigenous Studies (Treaty 7).

    He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017) which was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. He is also the author of Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018) which was long listed for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and Canada Reads 2021. Whitehead is the editor of Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, which won the Lambda Award in 2021.

    This is a hybrid event: the program is in-person, but will be streamed live: https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/36739. A recording of the event will be provided on the OPL YouTube page afterwards.

    Registration is for the in-person portion of the event- Registration required. This event is free but seating is limited.

  • European Book Club - Greece

    Sunnyside

    Tuesday Jun 18, 2024 at 6:00pm
    120 minutes

    Drop-in program

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    Join us for the ultimate armchair travel around Europe. The European Book Club is offered in partnership with European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in Ottawa to promote contemporary European authors and their works. A book title from an EU country is selected for discussion each month.

    Irena Karafilly will talk about her book "Arrested Song"

    Calliope Adham – young, strong-willed, and recently widowed – is schoolmistress in the village of Molyvos when Hitler’s army invades Greece in 1941. Well-read and linguistically gifted, she is recruited by the Germans to act as their liaison officer. It is the beginning of a personal and national saga that will last for several decades.

  • Pride Month: Embodying Love As Resilience - Author Kai Cheng Thom

    Nepean Centrepointe
    The Chamber

    Thursday Jun 27, 2024 at 7:00pm
     minutes
    Register

    Drawing from over 15 years of queer and trans advocacy, as well as over a decade in practice as a wellness professional, trauma recovery expert, and conflict transformation facilitator, award-winning author and spiritual teacher Kai Cheng Thom offers a revitalizing perspective on the meaning of love in a time of intense social strife and political polarization : How do we understand love not as a fuzzy feeling, not as an intellectual concept, but as a discipline and set of practices that we can apply to strengthen our resilience and deepen relationships for the purpose of pursuing justice? Love as our greatest power in the struggle for social change? This highly engaged, practically focused presentation will leave you with: 1) A simple but powerful psychological framework for understanding love and resilience as a practice, 2) 3 simple tools that you can use to resolve conflict and engage in meaningful conversations with people who may hold bigoted or prejudiced beliefs, 3) A visualization practice for self-care and personal development.

    There will be a Q&A and book signing with the author to follow the event.

    This is a hybrid event: the program is in-person, but we will also stream live on OPL's YouTube page.

    Registration is for the in-person portion of the event.

    In-person attendees will get the chance to win a copy of Falling Back in Love with Being Human.

    This event is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Ottawa Public Library Association.

    About Kai Cheng Thom:

    Kai Cheng Thom, Master of Social Work, MSc Couple & Family Therapy, is a Certified Somatic Sex Educator, Qualified Mediator, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Certified Professional Life Coach based in tkaronto/Toronto. She is the author of six award-winning books in various genres, including the Publishing Triangle Award-winning essay collection on Transformative Justice, I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE, the New York Times-featured picture book From the Stars In the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, and the recent Canadian bestseller Falling Back In Love With Being Human.

    Kai Cheng's work as a noted practitioner and teacher of Somatic Sex Education, Sexological Bodywork, and Somatic Coaching focuses on the intersection of social justice, pleasure activism, and transformative approaches to healing conflict and harm. She maintains a private practice as a hands-on sex and intimacy coach with individuals, couples, and polycules, as well as a consultancy as a master facilitator and leadership coach with organizations across North America. She also teaches as Adjunct Faculty at the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education and Faculty at The Embody Lab, having trained hundreds of practitioners in body-based, trauma-informed, and anti-oppressive approaches to individual and social change.