2026 Kreisel Lecture: A Special Anniversary Edition with Lise Gaboury-Diallo, Richard Van Camp, and Shani Mootoo
- Feb. 27, 2026 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
- Timms Centre for the Arts (87 Avenue and 112 Street), University of Alberta
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Join the Centre for Literatures in Canada celebrates the 20th Anniversary Kreisel Lecture. In partnership with the University of Alberta’s Writer-in-Residence Program, marking their 50th anniversary in 2026, this special edition brings together three acclaimed authors for a unique, three-part lecture explores what it means to write “in Canada” and “in residence,” examining the relationship between place, identity, and storytelling.
At a moment when “in Canada” is at once fraught and fiercely defended, we have asked the authors to consider one or more of the following questions: What responsibility do you assume, as a writer, to the place(s) you inhabit and/or write about – or perhaps for? What relationships do you draw between imaginative inhabiting and physical inhabiting? How do particular places call out to be represented? What connections and tensions exist between the local and the national? What preexisting literary textures in these places influence you as a writer?
We hope you’ll join us for this dynamic literary cross-pollination!
About the authors
Lise Gaboury-Diallo, a Frango-Manitoban writer, has published several collections of poetry over the years, including her most recent title, quatre écarts, a trilingual edition with her poems in French translated into Spanish by Maria Fernanda Arentsen and into English by Mark Stout (Éditions du Blé, 2022). The text is accompanied by visual works by the following artists: Anna Binta Diallo, Monique Fillion, Étienne Gaboury, and Laurence Véron. The author was delighted to have several poems included in the collective Projet terre (Éditions David, 2021), edited by Michel Therrien and Nelson Charest.
In 2023, Gaboury-Diallo published juste une moitié de lune (Éditions du Blé), her third collection of short stories. That same year, she won the Rue-Deschambault literary prize for her collection of poetry petites déviations (Éditions du Blé, 2021). In September 2025, her full length historical and biographical play Pauline Boutal, entre les toiles et les planches (Éditions du Blé, 2025), was presented at the beginning of the Théâtre Cercle Molière’s centennial season.
Richard Van Camp, a recipient of the Order of the Northwest Territories, is a proud Tlicho Dene from Fort Smith, NWT, now living in Edmonton: Treaty 6 Territory with his family. Richard is an internationally renowned storyteller and award winning author of 30 books for all ages. His novel, The Lesser Blessed, is now a feature film on Prime Video, and his graphic novel with Neiva Mateus, Three Feathers, is now a feature film on APTN. He is a mentor with the Audible Indigenous Writers' Circle and he is the University of Victoria's Indigenous Storyteller in Residence where he teaches online about reclaiming family medicines. His new novel, BEAST, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award in 2025.
Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad, relocating to Canada in her early twenties. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) in 1980 and a Master of Arts in English and Theatre from the University of Guelph in 2010. She practiced initially as a video maker and visual artist, and for the last thirty years, Mootoo has concentrated on novel writing, poetry and photo-based work.
Her novels include Starry Starry Night, Polar Vortex, and Cereus Blooms at Night. A four-time nominee for the Giller Prize, her work has been longlisted for the Booker Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Prize. Her poetry books include Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or. Mootoo has served as writer-in-residence at universities across the world, including, in Canada, at the University of Alberta, the University of Guelph, and the University of Toronto. She was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa from Western, is a recipient of Lambda Literary's James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award, and The National Library’s Library and Archives Scholar Award. Mootoo lives in Southern Ontario.
- Cost
- $15.00 - Regular Ticket, $5.00 - Student/CLC donor
- Contact
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Katherine Kupchenko
katherine.kupchenko@ualberta.ca - Audience
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Alumni
Community, Public
Faculty, Staff - Category
- Alumni Lectures, Seminars