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Seven Up

With Christine Wu, Eric Schmaltz, Ryad Assani-Razaki, Halina St. James, David Bergen, Shani Mootoo, and Sarah Mian

Wednesday, November 5
7:00PM – 9:30PM (Doors open at 6:30PM)
Cafe Lara (2347 Agricola Street, Halifax)
$10.00

Out of stock

Description

Our seventh annual midweek festival freakout at Cafe Lara features Christine Wu, Eric Schmaltz, Ryad Assani-Razaki, Halina St. James, David Bergen and Shani Mootoo, and hosted with usual sass by Sarah Mian. This one always sells out, so get your ticket now! Presented by Rosie Porter Realtor.

Speakers

  • Christine Wu is a poet who was born and raised on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver, BC). In 2023, she was the winner of the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award and in 2022, she was shortlisted for the RBC Writers' Trust Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her first poetry collection, Familial Hungers, was published by Brick Books in 2025. She now lives and writes in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS) in Mi'kma'ki.

  • Eric Schmaltz is the author of Borderblur Poetics: Intermedia and Avant-Gardism in Canada, 1963-1988 (University of Calgary Press), Surfaces (Invisible Publishing), and, most recently, I Confess (Coach House Books). He is the editor of Another Order: Selected Works of Judith Copithorne (Talonbooks) and co-editor of I Want to Tell You Love by bill bissett and Milton Acorn. Working in both critical and creative contexts, his work has been published in Jacket2, Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, Best American Experimental Writing: 2020, Arc Poetry, The Globe and Mail, and elsewhere. He lives in Kjipuktuk/Halifax.

  • Ryad Assani-Razaki was born in 1981 in Cotonou in the West African state of Benin. In 2009, his short story collection Deux cercles was awarded the Trillium Book Award. His debut novel La main d'Iman won the Prix Robert-Cliche in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction in 2012.

  • Halina St. James is a former International TV News journalist from Canada, presentations skills coach and professional speaker. She is the author of The Golden Daughter: My mother’s secret past as a Ukrainian slave worker in Nazi Germany. Halina wrote her book to bring attention to the more than 5 million slave workers, like her mother, whom the Nazi snatched from their homes or who were lured to Germany by the promise of food and work. The story of the slave workers of WW2 has never been revealed in detail. Halina lives with her husband on a peaceful island in Tantallon, Nova Scotia, Canada. When she's not writing, she's gardening and ballroom dancing.

  • David Bergen is the author of eleven novels and two collections of short stories. His work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Impac Dublin Literary Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Among his acclaimed works are The Time in Between, The Matter with Morris, Out of Mind, and Away From the Dead. In 2018 Bergen was given the Writer’s Trust Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life. His latest novel is Days of Feasting and Rejoicing.

  • Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland, raised in Trinidad, and has lived in Canada for more than forty years. She is the author of several novels, including her most recent Starry Starry Night, Polar Vortex, and Cereus Blooms at Night which is now a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Classics book. Her work has been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Giller Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among others. Her poetry books include Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or. She has been awarded the Doctor of Letters honoris causa degree from Western University, is a recipient of Lambda Literary's James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award, and The National Library’s Library and Archives Scholar Award. She lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.

  • Sarah Mian's debut novel, When the Saints, won the Jim Connors Book Award, the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. She is currently working on her second novel, The World in Awful Sleep.