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AwkWord: True stories, told live in front of an audience

With Catherine Bush, Vinh Nguyen, Fazeela Jiwa, Monica Njoku, Stephanie Domet, and Carole Rankin
Friday, April 25
7:00PM – 9:00PM (Doors open at 6:30PM)
Cafe Lara (2347 Agricola Street, Halifax)
$10.00

Description

Join us for our second annual AwkWord: A night of true storytelling. Featuring Catherine Bush, Vinh Nguyen, Fazeela Jiwa, Monica Njoku, and Carole Rankin. Hosted by Stephanie Domet, this raucous night features true stories told candidly and off the cuff. Snacks are on the house. The bar is open. Laughs are guaranteed.

Speakers

  • Catherine Bush is the author of five novels, including the widely acclaimed Blaze Island, Accusation, and The Rules of Engagement, a New York Times Notable Book. Her books have been shortlisted for the Trillium Prize, City of Toronto Book Award, and Books in Canada First Novel Award. The recipient of numerous fellowships, she was the 2024 Writer-in-Residence/Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society in Germany. An Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Guelph, she lives in Toronto. Skin (2025) is her first collection of stories.

  • VINH NGUYEN is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Brick, Literary Hub, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, Grain, Queen’s Quarterly, The Criterion Collection’s Current, and MUBI’s Notebook. He is a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly, where he curates an ongoing series on refugee, migrant, and diasporic writing. He is the author of the academic book Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience. His writing has been short-listed for a National Magazine Award and has received the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Literature. In 2022, he was a Lambda Literary Fellow in Nonfiction for emerging LGBTQ writers.

  • I'm an acquisitions and development editor at Fernwood Publishing, an independent publisher dedicated to critical thinking. In 2023, Editors Canada gave me the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence. I'm also a writer, which is much harder. I like to use humour and existential absurdity to explore complex human contexts like migration. I've had pieces published in anthologies and magazines. I'm currently working on my first book, my second book, and my third book all at the same time.

  • Monica Njoku is a people connector who believes in the power of holistic leadership. During the day, she does community and industry engagement work for the province of Nova Scotia. During the night, she is a part-time student in Dalhouse's Social Work program. Monica is a Sagittarian, avid traveller, skilled thrift shopper, and prefers to schedule her activities around what she’s going to eat. She lives in Spryfield with her mum and her elderly dog, Purdy.

  • Stephanie Domet is the author of two novels, and is at work on a third. She lives in Halifax where she is a freelance writer and editor who teaches creative writing in her dining room to little kids, sews her own clothes, and absolutely wants to make you supper when you’re in town.

  • Carole Rankin is a mother, sewist, and communications professional who lives in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. She is the founder of Connecting Threads: A Community Quilt for Perinatal Mental Health, which brings together her two passions; sewing and storytelling, all for the purpose of healing, community building, and de-stigmatizing perinatal mental health.