Getting prepared for our second reading of the season and our last of 2017. This year has been a great one for so many of our readers. Many have been nominated and won some awards and others have completed another book.

November 26 at 5:00pm

Famous Last Words, 392 Pacific Ave (in the heart of the Junction)

We’re thrilled to have a guest host this month! Brent van Staalduinen lives in Hamilton, Ontario and has published many short stories and his novel, Saints, Unexpected was a finalist for the 2017 Hamilton Literary Award. Brent is the winner of The Bristol Short Story Prize, The Lush Triumphant Literary Award, The Fiddlehead Best Short Story Award, The Writer Magazine’s “Our Darkest Hour” Prize and The Short Works Prize. We have been lucky enough to have him read from his work at Junction Reads and we are even more grateful he will be hosting this month.

This gig as host at Junction Reads is a  natural extension of his ardent supporter of writing and writers in and beyond the GTA.

We welcome 5 unique voices to our stage this month!!

Daniel Karasik is an actor, playwright and author of Faithful and Other Stories, the story collection coming to us on November 26. Daniel has won the CBC Short Story Prize, the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and The Malahat Review’s Jack Hodgins Founders Award for Fiction. His previous books include Hungry, a poetry collection, and three volumes of plays. His award-winning plays been produced across Canada, in the United States, and frequently in translation in Germany.

Sanjay Talreja is a filmmaker whose work has appeared on television and theatrical screens in Canada, the US, and India. He has written a novella, and is currently working on  a detective novel. His collection of short stories, Downward this Dog, will bring a bit of fun to our stage this month. Sanjay has won several awards for his films. He lives in Toronto.

Pasha Malla’s writing has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Walrus, the Journey Prize Stories, a ‘Notable Story’ in Best American Nonrequired Reading (edited by Dave Eggers), Toronto Noir, Taddle Creek, and GreenTOpia. The Withdrawal Method, his first book, was longlisted for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Best First Book) and won both the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Trillium Book. Pasha brings his novel, Fugue States to our stage and we look forward to hearing him read.

Grace O’Connell is a Toronto-based writer and editor and the author of Magnified World and Be Ready for the Lightning, which we will hear from this month. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in publications including The Walrus, Taddle Creek, the Globe & Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, ELLE Canada, Sharp Magazine for Men, Quill & Quire, and the Journey Prize Stories. She has been nominated for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award and two National Magazine Awards for fiction, and was the 2014 winner of the Canadian Author Association’s Emerging Writer Award. She lives in Toronto.

Sky Curtis was born in Toronto, Canada and has lived in England as well as the Canadian maritimes, travelling to both places frequently. Under her birth name of Kathryn MacKay, Sky has worked as an editor, author, software designer, magazine writer, scriptwriter, poet, teacher, and children’s writer. She has published over a dozen books. Passionate about literacy and involved with youth, her entertaining syndicated children’s column appeared in weeklies across the country for almost ten years. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals, including The Antigonish Review, Canadian Forum, and This Magazine. Sky brings her mystery novel, Flush: A Robin MacFarland Mystery to us this month!