Literary arts

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/

In Conversation event featuring Laura Hall speaking with University of Alberta associate professor Jordan Abel about her book Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes: Settler Colonialism in Horror.

When: Thursday, October 16, 2025 @ 7 to 8:30 pm
Where: Citadel Theatre (Zeidler Hall), 9828 - 101A Ave
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

Turning a lens on the dark legacy of colonialism in horror film, from Scream to Halloween and beyond

Horror films, more than any other genre, offer a chilling glimpse—like peering through a creaky attic door—into the brutality of settler colonial violence. While Indigenous peoples continue to struggle against colonization, white settler narratives consistently position them as a threat, depicting the Indigenous Other as an ever-present menace, lurking on the fringes of “civilized” society. Indigenous inclusion or exclusion in horror films tells a larger story about myths, fears, and anxieties that have endured for centuries.

Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes traces connections between Indigenous representations, gender, and sexuality within iconic horror classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. The savage killer, the romantic and doomed Indian, the feral “mad woman”—no trope or archetype escapes the shadowy influence of settler colonialism. In the end, horror both disrupts and uncovers colonial violence—only to bury its victims once more.

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

Join us for a journey through the anthologies from Edmonton-based Laberinto Press.

When: Thursday, October 16, 2025 @ 5 to 6:30 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Muttart Theatre (7 Sir Winston Churchill Square)
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

In a largely primarily anglophone and Anglo-centric publishing industry, Laberinto Press has won the recognition of its peers for delivering outstanding works from writers whose first language is not English, and World Literature in translation. Their books have received rave reviews. This “Little Press That Could” continues making strides. Meanwhile, they continue tapping into diaspora authors living in Canada.

Featuring: Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Mila Philipzig, Kathryn Lennon, Sandro Silva, Cedric Usman, and Phany Peña T

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

From an innovator of autofiction comes a meditation on grief, care, Buddhism, and artmaking. 

‘This is a story. It is a story about someone accompanying another to the last gate.’

When: 12 to 1:30 pm
Where: Online
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

Years ago, Kristjana Gunnars took her husband back to his home in Oslo to die. Through the dark, cold days, she tends to his needs as she feels her own self disintegrating. Later, as she looks back to this slow departure of the man she loved, she weaves together threads from her own life, reflections on the thoughts of Gautama Buddha, discussions of Renaissance art, and considerations of contemporary artists.

Engaging with thinkers as varied as Ingmar Bergman and Jacques Derrida, Henry David Thoreau, and Ursula K. Le Guin, Gunnars — one of the earliest practitioners of “autofiction” — crafts a new kind of hybrid text, with elements of memoir, lyrical essay, Buddhist teachings, poetics, art theory, and meditation.

The Silence of Falling Snow is a deep dive into grief, the way we circle around it, dipping in and out of the pain, finding comfort in art and philosophy and religion where we can. It’s an intellectual cabaret, a Buddhist primer, and a pointillist portrait of grief – above all, it’s the consoling and invigorating reflection we need in this moment.

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

Ten tellers. Five minutes. One winner. Let the game of truth begin! Sign-up at 7pm, slam at 7:30pm. Free to attend; arrive early! Space is limited.

• Where: 9910 (basement of the Common) 9910 109 Street
• When: October 15th, 7:00-9:00pm
• Sign up: 7 pm, come to the table at the front to sign up
• There are no tickets to attend and we will never ask you for money prior to the event. When you come that evening, we will ask for $5 from the story tellers for administration, and then pass the hat to audience members during intermission for the winner (suggested donation $5)
• What to expect: beverages, great atmosphere, language and content warning, menu from The Common
• This is an over 18 venue. No minors allowed.
• Please see rules and FAQ's for more details on storytelling

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

Author Paul Myers in conversation with Edmonton’s Historian Laureate, Donna Coombs-Montrose. 

From the bestselling author of Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy, the definitive biography of John Candy—a heartwarming portrait of one of comedy’s most beloved and enduring stars.

When: Wednesday, October 15, 2025 @ 6 to 7:30 pm
Where: Citadel Theatre (Zeidler Hall), 9828 - 101A Ave
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

From his humble beginnings in sketch comedy with the Toronto branch of Second City, to his rise to fame in SCTV and Hollywood film classics like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Great Outdoors, and Uncle Buck, John Candy captivated audiences with his self-deprecating humour, emotional warmth, and gift for improvisation. Now, for the first time since Candy’s tragic death, bestselling biographer Paul Myers tells the full story of the man behind the laughs.

Drawing on extensive research and exclusive interviews with many of Candy’s closest friends and colleagues, including Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, Steve Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, and many more, John Candy: A Life in Comedy celebrates the comedian’s unparalleled talent, infectious charm, and generosity of spirit. Through ups and downs, successes and failures, and struggles with anxiety and self-doubt, Candy faced the world with a big smile and a warm demeanour that earned him the love and adoration of fans around the world.

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

"What if you spend the rest of your life 

chasing love, only find her cowering

in the pit of your stomach?

What then?"

Almost Loved, a poetry collection written by emerging poet, Alberta-based author Rena Joy, will be connecting with readers this October and November. 

Almost Loved follows an adoptee from foster care as she searches for love and healing while pushing back on the labels assigned to her. Grappling with subjects of abuse, mental health, and deeply held grief, this collection aims to answer: what does it truly mean to be loved in a world where you're seen as second best? ​​

This debut collection has been described as “real, vulnerable, evocative,” offering a rare glimpse into the adoptee experience and a safe space for readers who may struggle with their mental health. 

Almost Loved is available for purchase wherever books are sold. Rena will be connecting with readers in October during Foster Care Awareness Month in Alberta and in November for National Adoption Awareness Month. 

Book Signing Dates, 12-4 pm. 

October 4, Chapters St. Albert.

October 11, Indigo Sherwood Park.

November 1, Indigo South Edmonton Common. 

Poetry Reading - November 27 - Stony Plain Library, 7 pm.

Rena Joy is a 2023 Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient for her poetry work and 2021 Alberta Foundation for the Arts grant recipient for her work for children. She was also the 2024 featured writer with the Edmonton Public Library. She lives in rural Alberta, on the outskirts of Edmonton. For more information about Almost Loved and Rena Joy, visit renajoypoetry.com.