We are thrilled to get back to the microphone with readings scheduled for January 26, February 23 and March 29!!

On January 26, we are so excited to host our readings at the Anansi Book Shop, 128 Stirling Road (Lower Level). Accessibility information is available on their website. Come early and browse the bookshelves! We will have some refreshments, coffee and tea and we’d love for you to join us for drink at Henderson Brewery afterward!

This is a PWYC event, with a suggested donation of $5.00. Feel free to throw more into the pot. All proceeds go to the authors. January 26, we welcome Maria Meindl, Sally Cooper, Dean Serravalle and David Albertyn.

A good friend of Junction Reads and host of the Draft Reading Series, Maria Meindl will be reading from her first novel, THE WORK from Stonehouse Publishing.

“When aspiring stage-manager Rebecca Weir falls for the married director of SenseInSound theatre company, she initiates a love triangle and working collaboration which go on for two decades. Set in Toronto at the start of the 1980s, the novelexplores the genesis of what its disciples call ‘The Work’. The director, Marlin, has the status of a Guru in SenseInSound, but is he pushing people’s limits or abusing his power? Is the ‘The Work’ a cutting-edge artistic practice, a road to personal healing, or a cult?”

Sally Cooper returns with her new novel, WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD from Wolsak and Wynn. “In an ambitious, yet intimate novel set in Taos, New Mexico, and Hamilton, Ontario, Sally Cooper explores unexpected motherhood, creativity, race, love and faith. With My Back to the World tells the stories of three women: Rudie, who is editing a documentary in Hamilton in 2010; historical artist Agnes Martin, who decides in 1974 after seven years’ exile in New Mexico to begin painting again; and Ellen, a black woman burying her husband in 1870 on an Ontario homestead. Each of these women is waiting for the arrival of an unexpected child and their interconnected stories explore how society’s, and our own, ideas of what it means to be a woman, a mother and an artist change over time.”

Dean Serravalle brings his latest novel, WHERE I FALL WHERE SHE RISES from Inanna Publications. ” Where I Fall, Where She Rises is a novel that follows two women on opposite ends of a terrorist kidnapping. While one woman suffers and falls at the hands of her captors, the other exploits the fame of such a publicized event to secure a future for her unborn child. Lea Ironstone is a Canadian freelance journalist who recalls her time spent in the very dangerous red zone of Baghdad, after the 2003 U.S. invasion. A self-destructive addict, she refuses to relegate herself to the safer green zone, where most mainstream news journalists like Paul Shell are protected. Desperately seeking a more controversial story to re-establish his fame as a television journalist for GNN, Paul Shell contacts Lea and agrees to meet her in the red zone for a recent finding. They are kidnapped by an insurgent terrorist sect and tortured repeatedly. Carol Shell, Paul Shell’s wife lives in New York. Eight months pregnant, Carol is approached by Timothy Abel, her husband’s agent. Timothy wishes to represent her “victimhood,” which he sees as a very marketable and exploitable asset. Her appetite for fame and celebrity eclipses her familial priorities and she is coerced into a lifestyle that hinges on personal promotion. Lea and Paul find themselves incarcerated in a basement dungeon expecting their next “artistic” torture, while Carol makes her next public appearance to further her star. Lea and Paul’s relationship evolves into a mutual understanding of their united fate, while Carol, on the other side of the world, rises in public stature..”

David Albertyn brings us his novel, UNDERCARD published by Anansi. “When Tyron Shaw returns to his hometown of Las Vegas after eleven years in the Marines, he’s surprised to discover that two of his best friends from childhood are all anyone is talking about: Antoine Deco, three years out of prison, hasn’t lost a boxing match since his release, and tonight is fighting in the undercard to the fight of the decade; and Keenan Quinn, a police officer who killed an unarmed teenager and escaped punishment from the courts, is the subject of a protest tomorrow morning. Tyron has trouble reconciling either story with his memory of these men, and the situation escalates when he runs into the love of his life, Naomi Wilks, a retired WNBA player, basketball coach, and estranged wife of Keenan. As Tyron reconnects with his old community, he will learn over the next twenty-four hours that much has changed since he left Las Vegas . . . and there is much more that he never understood.”