Literary arts

An evening of literature, art, and music hosted by The Polyglot and Daaira House

LitFest, October 18, 2025, 5:00pm to 7:00pm, The Green Room (Unit 2-786, 10545 - 108 Street), Edmonton
This event is free to attend.

For the past nine years, The Polyglot—an award-winning local multilingual magazine—has offered a vibrant platform for artists, writers, and translators to experiment with language and art.

At LitFest, we are honoured to launch our fifteenth issue, Daaira—a collaboration with Daaira House, guest edited by Aaima Azhar and Zainab Azhar.

As the editors write: “This issue has been curated to capture what is well and unwell within us all and the rituals that play witness. The healing will come. Let us first call it what it is. Let us make for it a little space. Let us draw around it a circle, a دائرہ.”

Daaira (circle) moves between ritual (Rasm-e-Dil, Ritual of the Heart) and remembrance (Yaad-e-Dil, Re-membrance of the Heart), creating a space where wellness is not individual but communal. For this reason, we’re thrilled to be hosted by the Green Room.

✨Join us for an evening of multilingual readings, music, and visual art
✨Participate in a guided writing session led by Aaima Azhar
✨Share light refreshments in community
✨Witness performances that embody healing and creativity

Hosts: Aaima Azhar & Zainab Azhar
Authors: Illyana Cardinal, Muhammad Azhar, Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Leilei Chen, Tamara Aschenbrenner
Musicians: The Calamansi Club
Artists: April Angeles, Maryam Lary, Niabi Kapoor

Come sit in the circle with us. All are welcome. ✨

More information: https://litfestalberta.org/event-1/showcase-daaira-the-healing-will-come-polyglot-magazine-launch/

LitFest is thrilled to partner with Edmonton’s Agatha Press to bring you the launch of their fall releases – Sincerely, Sincerely by Rayanne Haines and Carolyne Van Der Meer, AS LONG AS I’M ALIVE I HAVE INFINITE CHANCES by ryan fitzpatrick, and i give birth to my body by Leilei Chen.

Featuring: Leilei Chen, ryan fitzpatrick, Rayanne Haines and Carolyne Van Der Meer
Host: Matthew Stepanic

When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 5 to 6:30 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Stanley A. Milner branch (Muttart Theatre), 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

Join us for this very special reading and conversation with graphic memoirists Teresa Wong and Sarah Leavitt, featuring their latest graphic memoirs, All Our Ordinary Stories and Something, Not Nothing.

All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey
WINNER of 2 Alberta Literary Awards (the Memoir Award and the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction)

When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 3 to 4:30 pm
Where: Citadel Theatre (Zeidler Hall), 9828 - 101A Ave, Edmonton

From the author of Dear Scarlet comes a graphic memoir about the obstacles one daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents. Beginning with her mother’s stroke in 2014, Teresa Wong takes us on a moving journey through time and place to locate the beginnings of the disconnection she feels from her parents. Through a series of stories – some epic, like her mother and father’s daring escapes from communes during China’s Cultural Revolution, and some banal, like her quitting Chinese school to watch Saturday morning cartoons – Wong carefully examines the cultural, historical, language, and personality barriers to intimacy in her family, seeking answers to the questions “Where did I come from?” and “Where are we going?” At the same time, she discovers how storytelling can bridge distances and help make sense of a life.

A book for children of immigrants trying to honour their parents’ pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves, All Our Ordinary Stories is poignant in its understated yet nuanced depictions of complicated family dynamics. Wong’s memoir is a heartfelt exploration of identity and inheritance, as well as a testament to the transformative power of stories both told and untold.

Something, Not Nothing:A Story of Grief and Love
Finalist, Will Eisner Award; Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction; Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes

A poignant and beautifully illustrated graphic memoir about love and loss and navigating a new life. In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo’s death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink, and coloured pencil – for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics.

The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

*This is a free workshop for BIPOC authors
14 spaces available

Facilitator: Justine Abigail Yu

When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 2:30 to 5 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Stanley A. Milner branch (EPL Community Room), 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square

As hyphenated individuals living in between cultures, we are, as activist Eboo Patel describes it, “standing at the crossroads of inheritance and discovery, trying to look both ways at once.” In this writing workshop, we write to honour our ancestors and imagine the path we lay for generations to come. 

We ask ourselves, who are our ancestors? For those of us from communities that have largely been displaced – on this land or another, by force or by choice – what connections do we hold to our past and to those who came before us? We look to our ancestors – biological or chosen – and honor all they have given us, while letting go of what no longer serves us.

We then turn to the future, to the possibilities that lay before us. Have you ever considered yourself as a future ancestor? As an elder with wisdom to share and possibilities to create? In the second part of our workshop, we ask ourselves, what riches do we inherit, and what discoveries are left for us to bestow upon future generations? 

No writing experience is necessary – only an open heart and an open mind with a readiness to give and receive vulnerability. We’ve carefully and intentionally designed this workshop to be intimate and generative. We’ll give you writing prompts to spark your creativity in a supportive environment. All writing materials will be provided.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/
 

Take part in this exciting workshop with Julie Sedivy. 

When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 12 to 2 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Stanley A. Milner branch (Community Room), 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Tickets: $15

Sentences are the foundation of all writing, and mastering the sentence is essential to developing a strong writing voice. In this workshop, Sedivy will bring in gorgeous, surprising, intriguing, devastating sentences from a variety of genres, including romance, sci-fi, fantasy, young adult and children’s books, in addition to more traditional literary genres. She will discuss what makes a wonderful opening sentence, what kinds of final sentences leave the reader satisfied while also keeping the work alive in the mind. You will talk about sentence structure, how it can be exploited to create pacing or heighten certain emotions, and how varying the structure of sentences can make a passage more interesting or beautiful. You will discuss how some parts of the sentence highlight information more than others, much like throwing a spotlight on some of the content, making that portion of the sentence especially memorable. Or how certain devices subtly allude to background information that the reader can quickly construct, without bogging the prose down with boring exposition. This session will begin by having participants free-write a short passage, and then we would play with various structures and devices to alter their original sentences and observe the effects. This interactive workshop will have very broad appeal for writers across genres, and will be useful for beginning and advanced writers alike.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

This panel discussion brings together the founders of Laberinto Press, Hungry Zine and Living Hyphen to discuss the need for and the challenges of publishing multicultural, multilingual, and hyphenated authors in the ever-evolving landscape of Canadian publishing. This panel will be moderated by translator and Edmonton’s 11th Poet Laureate, Medgine Mathurin.

Featuring: Justine Abigail Yu, Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Kathryn Lennon
Moderator: Medgine Mathurin
When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 12 to 1:30 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Muttart Theatre (7 Sir Winston Churchill Square)
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

In conversation event with Julie Salverson to talk about her book, A Necessary Distance: Confessions of a Scriptwriter’s Daughter.

When: Friday, October 17, 2025 @ 7:30 to 9:30 pm
Where: Citadel Theatre (Zeidler Hall), 9828 - 101A Ave
Tickets: $5 (student/low income) or $15 (regular)

George Salverson had written over a thousand radio plays for the CBC before he became the first television drama editor for the corporation. He wrote scripts for such beloved series as The Beachcombers and The Littlest Hobo, but he kept very little of his writing, being decidedly unsentimental about his work. So when his daughter Julie found a series of notebooks from a round-the-world trip he’d taken in 1963 to work on a documentary about world hunger, she knew she’d found something important. But the writer of these notebooks is not the father she thought she knew. From there Julie Salverson traces a fascinating web of personal and political history, of storytelling, of culture and it’s shaping and of a man caught in a time of great change.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

In conversation event with curling legend John Cullen to discuss his latest book, Curling Rocks!: Chronicles of the Roaring Game.

When: Friday, October 17, 2025 @ 7 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Muttart Theatre (7 Sir Winston Churchill Square)
Tickets: $5 (student/low-income) or $15 (regular)

Drawing on author John Cullen’s years of experience as both a stand-up comic and an elite curler, Curling Rocks! offers a lighthearted, expertly detailed look at a unique sport and its history, from the most absurd curling fashions to the most sublime matches ever played.

The sport of curling continues to expand its global reach, attracting new players and fans far beyond traditional strongholds. Yet, even in Canada—a country with a long curling history and fifteen hundred clubs of its own—the game is often dismissed as an eccentric pastime.

According to author John Cullen, this is because curling is both inherently funny and chronically underestimated as a battle of skill and strategy. And Cullen is perfectly qualified to make this double-edged claim: not only is he a stand-up comic with many years of experience at the mic, but he’s had years on the ice as an elite curler.

Because most previous books on curling have been either how-to guides or standard biographies of prominent players, there has long been space for a reader-friendly overview of the “roaring game” (a nickname inspired by the sound of the forty-pound stone en route to its target). Curling Rocks! sets out to fill this gap with a lighthearted, expertly detailed account of the sport, ranging from the absurd to the sublime. Next to his observations on ill-fitting fashions and odd scandals—among them “Broomgate,” when controversial new sweeping technology almost took out the curling world—Cullen offers insights on everything from the greatest matches ever played to the peculiar heartbreak that comes with losing.

In these inviting, irreverent and often deeply personal essays, Cullen finally gives the perplexing, beloved game its due.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

What is conscious and unconscious in how we utilize language? How do we use language to create meaning? For anyone who has a love for the construction and utilization of language, this panel is a must-attend at this year’s festival! Lovingly referred to as The Smartypants Panel, this event brings together language scientists and poets to talk all things related to language.

Featuring: Joel Katelnikoff, Canisia Lubrin, and Julie Sedivy
Moderator: Alice Major

When: Friday, October 17, 2025 @ 5 to 6:30 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Muttart Theatre (7 Sir Winston Churchill Square)
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

Award-winning author Marcello Di Cintio in conversation to talk about his latest book, Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers.

When: Thursday, October 16, 2025 @ 7 to 8:30 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Muttart Theatre (7 Sir Winston Churchill Square)
Tickets: $5 (student/low income) or $15 (regular)

Winner of the 2024 Dave Greber Freelance Writers Book Award

A series of profiles of foreign workers illuminates the precarity of global systems of migrant labor and the vulnerability of their most disenfranchised agents.

In 2023, after weeks of investigation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoyo Obokata came to a scathing conclusion: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Workers complained of excessive hours and unpaid overtime; of being forced to perform dangerous tasks or ones not specified in their contracts; of being physically abused, intimidated, and sexually harassed; and of overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions that deprived them of their privacy and dignity.

In Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers, Marcello Di Cintio ranges across the country speaking to those who have come from elsewhere to till our fields, bathe our elderly, and serve us our Double Doubles, uncovering stories of tremendous perseverance, resilience, and humanity, but also of precarity and vulnerability. He shows that vast swathes of our economy depend on the work of people we don’t see, while expanding our awareness of what migrant work now entails, and revealing that our mistreatment of the most vulnerable among us diminishes our own dignity.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/