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  • Making love with the land image of Joshua whitehead on teal background
    Rossy Pavilion

    Tuesday Jun 11, 2024 at 7:00pm
     minutes

    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.

  • Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street

    Thursday May 09, 2024 at 7:00pm
     minutes

    Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the Ottawa International Writers Festival and the Ottawa Public Library invite you to the launch of Canadians Who Innovate: The Trailblazers and Ideas That Are Changing the World by Roseann O’Reilly Runte, president of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.

    This remarkable new book profiles of some of the most inventive and creative Canadians and the ideas that are making Canada a leading nation in innovation. 

    This special occasion will include a discussion on innovation with the author and Nobel laureate, Art McDonald, and a performance by OrKidstra introduced by Tina Fedeski and Margaret Maria Toblowska. A number of innovators featured in the book will also be present.

    Featuring brilliant thinkers from coast to coast to coast and others from around the world who now call Canada home, Canadians Who Innovate paints a promising picture of a cleaner, healthier, more innovative future for us all.

    Seating is limited, please register.

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

    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.