Culture Blast:

An Evening with Canisia Lubrin, S.K. Ali, Cherie Dimaline, Amal El-Mohtar, and Aviaq Johnston

In Person Fiction

Admission

Free

Thursday

Feb , 2018

7:00pm

Eastern

IA&A at Hillyer

9 Hillyer Court Northwest Washington, DC United States • Ottawa

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Dimaline creates a character of tremendous emotional depth and tenderness, connecting readers with the complexity and compassion of Indigenous people. A dystopian world that is all too real and that has much to say about our own.

Kirkus Reviews on The Marrow Thieves

As part of our Canadian Delegation to Washington we are proud to present Culture Blast in partnership with IA&A at Hillyer and the Embassy of Canada

Join us for a February Culture Blast featuring five Canadian writers who will each read an excerpt from their writing, followed by a moderated discussion on the importance of culture and stories to an open and vibrant democracy. The conversation will be moderated by Matthew Davis.

This reading and panel event is presented by IA&A at Hillyer, a program of International Arts & Artists, in partnership with the Embassy of Canada and the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

The Authors

Amal El-Mohtar

Amal El-Mohtar is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism. Her stories and poems have appeared in magazines including Tor.com, Fireside Fiction, Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Apex, Stone Telling, and Mythic Delirium; anthologies including The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories (2017), The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales (2016), Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (2014), and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (2011); and in her own collection, The Honey Month (2010). She is co-author, with Max Gladstone, of the multiple award-winning This is How You Lose the Time War. Her articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, NPR Books and on Tor.com. She has been the New York Times's science fiction and fantasy columnist since February 2018

Aviaq Johnston

Aviaq Johnston is a young Inuk writer from Igloolik, Nunavut. Her debut novel Those Who Run in the Sky was released in the spring of 2017. In 2014 Aviaq won first place in the Aboriginal Arts and Stories competition for her short story ‘’Tarnikuluk’’, which also earned her a Governor General’s History Award. Aviaq is a graduate of Nunavut Sivuniksavut, and she has a diploma in Social Service Work from Canadore College. Aviaq loves to travel and has lived in Australia and Vietnam. She spends most of her time reading, writing, studying, and procrastinating. She goes back and forth between Iqaluit, Nunavut and Ottawa, Ontario.

Canisia Lubrin

Canisia Lubrin was born in St. Lucia. She has had work published in literary journals including Room, The Puritan, This Magazine, Arc, CV2 and The City Series #3: Toronto Anthology. She has been an arts administrator and community advocate for close to two decades. Lubrin has contributed to the podcast On The Line, hosted by Kate Sutherland for The Rusty Toque. She studied at York University where she won the President's Prize in poetry and the Sylvia Ellen Hirsch Memorial Award in creative writing. Lubrin holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and teaches at Humber College. She lives in Whitby, Ontario.

Cherie Dimaline

Cherie Dimaline is an author from the Georgian Bay Métis Community. Her book The Marrow Thieves won the prestigious Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature, the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature, and the Governor General's Literary Award, among others. It was named a Book of the Year on numerous lists, including those from NPR, the School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, the Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, and the CBC. Its sequel, Hunting by Stars, was published in 2021 to great acclaim, and has been selected as Book of the Year from NPR, Indigo, and Kobo, and is a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, as well as a Cityline Book Club Pick for December 2021.

S.K. Ali

S.K. Ali is a teacher based in Toronto whose writing on Muslim culture and life has appeared in the Toronto Star. Her family of Muslim scholars is consistently listed in the The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World, and her insight into Muslim culture is both personal and far-reaching. A mother of a teenage daughter herself, S.K. Ali's debut YA novel is a beautiful and nuanced story about a young woman exploring her identity through friendship, family, and faith.