About this Event
An evening of conversation that honours the power of words and writing as a call to action.
Conversation: 7-8pm, follow by audience Q&A.
Books available for sale, and signing to follow conversation.
Catherine Leroux (she/her) is the author of four highly praised novels and an innovative sequence of short stories. Her first novel, La marche en forêt, was a finalist for Quebec’s Booksellers’ Prize. Her bestselling second novel, Le mur mitoyen, won the France-Quebec Prize, and its translation, The Party Wall, was a finalist for the Giller Prize and longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award. Leroux’s story sequence, Madame Victoria, won Quebec’s Adrienne Choquette Prize. The Future, championed by Heather O’Neill, won Canada Reads 2024 and was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. The French original of The Future (L’avenir) won the Jacques-Brossard Prize and was a finalist for the Imaginary Horizons Prize and the Quebec Booksellers’ Prize. Catherine Leroux works as a translator and editor in Montreal. She was awarded the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation.
Maggie Helwig (she/they) is a white settler in Tkaronto/Toronto, and is the author of fifteen books and chapbooks, including Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community, which was awarded the 2025 Toronto Book Award, and Girls Fall Down (Coach House Books, 2008), which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award and chosen as the One Book Toronto in 2012. Helwig is a long-time social justice activist, and also an Anglican priest, and has been the rector of the Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields since 2013.
Erum Shazia Hasan was born in Canada, raised in France, and is of Pakistani and Indian heritage. She designs initiatives to help communities improve their livelihoods, ensuring opportunities for women while protecting biodiversity. A Sustainable Development Consultant for various UN agencies, she lives in Toronto with her husband and their two children.
Ali Hassan is a stand-up comedian, actor, author and broadcaster. Ali is the host of the hit stand-up comedy radio show Laugh Out Loud on CBC Radio and SiriusXM. He also often appears as a guest-host on the arts and culture shows q and Commotion, and for the past 10 years has been the host of Canada Reads - CBC's "Battle of the Books". He has performed with the Just For Laughs Festival across the country, he is a Canadian Comedy Award nominee, and was nominated for Canadian Screen Awards for his roles in two television shows – Run The Burbs and the Peabody-Award winning Sort Of. He lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his family. Find more of him at www.StandUpAli.com
Republic of Glass / Catherine Leroux
In near-future Montreal, where housing is a luxury that few can afford, rumours have begun to stir.
Sidonie, a trailblazing journalist, is the first to break the news of people disappearing off the streets—unsettling reports of unmarked government vehicles and attacks that have left encampment communities on edge. The story spreads like wildfire, thrusting Sidonie into the spotlight as the trusted mouthpiece for the most vulnerable population. But as public outrage and concern mount, Sidonie must decide how much she’s willing to risk to tell this story.
Eventually she finds herself on the other side of the mirror, within the walls of a new kind of institution whose residents may or may not be paid for their labour, and of which they may or may not be captive. In this context, Sidonie’s only escape is through her writing. As she reconstructs the events that led her here in her journal, she begins to realize that the page can provide an escape in more ways than one, and fiction, not truth, might set her free.
Instructions for the End of the World / Maggie Helwig
When lifelong activist and celebrated author Maggie Helwig became an Anglican priest, she brought both her hard-earned social justice wisdom and her incomparable literary prowess to the role. Where the homily – the weekly act of taking biblical texts and making them speak to one's time, place, and community – can easily become a rote exercise, Helwig takes the language and narrative very seriously. The homilies in this book, selected from those presented to her congregation over the last five years, talk about the Bible, and by extension, the world, through both an activist and a literary lens.
Instructions for the End of the World is how Helwig describes the gospels. As we live through the climate crisis and the rise of fascism around the world, Helwig’s responses to the ancient texts feel urgent and necessary, reminders of hope and meaning during a time of great anxiety and fear. Whether you’re religious or not, these homilies offer a basis for resistance and resources for building communities that may sustain us all.
We Meant Well / Erum Shazia Hasan
It’s the middle of the night in Los Angeles when Maya, a married mother of one, receives the phone call. Her colleague Marc has been accused of assaulting a local girl in Likanni, where they operate a charitable orphanage. Can she get on the next flight?
When Maya arrives, protesters surround the compound. The accuser is Lele, her former protégé and the chief’s daughter. There are no witnesses, no proof of any crime.
What happened that night? And what will happen to the orphanage if this becomes a scandal? Caught between Marc and Lele, the charity and the villagers, her marriage and new temptations, and between worlds, Maya lives the secret contradictions of the aid worker: there to serve the most deprived, but ultimately there to govern.
As Maya feels the pleasures, freedoms, and humanity of life in Likanni, she recognizes that her American life is inextricably woven into this violent reality — and that dishonesty in one place affects the realities in another.
Event venue & nearby stays
St.Stephen-In-The-Fields Church, 103 Bellevue Avenue, Toronto, Canada
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