SCPL LitFest
Join us for the third annual SCPL LitFest presented by the St. Catharines Public Library and the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre.
SCPL LitFest is an all-ages literary festival celebrating reading, writing, and illustration. It's about discovering literature at any age and unearthing new experiences. This year, we're excited to host a weeklong celebration of learning, literacy, and historical fiction! Join us from September 28th to October 3rd for a series of workshops and events to help you explore your literary creativity, discover new reads, and celebrate local literature.
Feature Event
Past Tense
A Historical Fiction Panel
St. Catharines Public Library's LitFest returns to the Performing Arts Centre stage for an immersive panel discussion featuring four talented historical fiction authors. Join the St. Catharines Public Library for Past Tense: A Historical Fiction Panel, where Bryn Turnbull, Jack Wang, Lisa Rochon, and Joanna Goodman will explore the influence of time and place in storytelling and narrative.
The panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Bring your book or purchase one at the event from our friends from Someday Books.
While Past Tense is free to attend, we encourage a pay-what-you-can donation to support future SCPL LitFest events!
Meet the Authors
Bryn Turnbull
Bryn Turnbull is the internationally bestselling author of The Woman Before Wallis. Equipped with a master of letters in creative writing from the University of St. Andrews, a master of professional communication from Ryerson University and a bachelor's degree in English literature from McGill University, Bryn focuses on finding stories of women lost within the cracks of the historical record. She lives in Toronto.
Jack Wang
Jack Wang is the author of the story collection We Two Alone (House of Anansi, 2020; HarperVia, 2021), winner of the 2021 Central New York Book Award in Fiction and the 2020 Danuta Gleed Literary Award from the Writers’ Union of Canada for best debut collection in English, shortlisted for the 2021 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and longlisted for Canada Reads 2022. His fiction has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Brick, PRISM international, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Humber Literary Review, and Joyland and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Journey Prize. His debut novel, The Riveter, received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Research and Creation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. He holds a BSc from the University of Toronto, an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona, and a PhD in English from Florida State University. In 2014–15, he held the David T. K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and in 2022, he served as a writer-in-residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver. He is a professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College. Originally from Vancouver, he lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and their two daughters.
Joanna Goodman
Joanna Goodman is the author of seven novels, including the new instant bestseller, The Inheritance, and the #1 national bestseller, The Home for Unwanted Girls, which was on the Canadian bestseller list for more than six months. Her other novels include The Forgotten Daughter and The Finishing School, both national bestsellers. Her stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, B & A Fiction, Event, The New Quarterly, and White Wall Review, as well as excerpted in Elisabeth Harvor’s fiction anthology A Room at the Heart of Things. Originally from Montreal, Joanna now lives in Toronto with her husband and two kids.
Lisa Rochon
Lisa Rochon is the author of the bestselling novel Tuscan Daughter. She is also an award-winning architecture critic, cultural commentator and essayist. She is the two-time winner of a National Newspaper Award for her “City Space” column in The Globe and Mail and the recipient of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s President’s Award for Architectural Journalism. Educated at the University of Toronto and in Paris at Sciences Po and École du Louvre, she is passionate about seeing the world afresh and with new complexity through female eyes. Rochon splits her time between Toronto and Europe.
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