UPCOMING AND RECENT EVENTS
Announcing the Winners of the 2026 CLC Student Poetry Contest
The Centre for Literatures in Canada congratulates Jasmine Hyatt-O'Donnell, Caitlyn McClintock, and Amy Bacon for their winning poems!
To read their poems, as well as those from recent past winners, click HERE.
Thank you to all the students who submitted poems this year, as well as to our contest partners: Athabasca University, MacEwan University, NAIT, the Writers Guild of Alberta, the Edmonton Poetry Festival, Athabasca University Press, NeWest Press, and University of Alberta Press.
2026 Kreisel Lecture: Anniversary Edition
Celebrating its 20th Anniversary, the CLC is partnering with the Writer-in-Residence Program, which celebrates its 50th Anniversary in 2026, to bring three celebrated authors to the Kreisel stage.
Former U of A Writers-in-Residence Richard Van Camp (2011-12) and Shani Mootoo (2001-02) will be joined by CLC visiting author Lise Gaboury-Diallo (2011). These authors will each speak, from their unique positions and experiences, on what it means to write “in Canada” and/or “in residence.”
Date: Friday, February 27
Time: 7:00-9:00 PM
Location: Timms Centre for the Arts (87 Avenue & 112 Street NW)
For more information about the invited lecturers, click HERE.
Stay tuned to our website, or sign up for our newsletter, to be among the first to know when a recording of this lecture is available online.
The Writer-in-Residence Hosts Kawika Guillermo
Writer-in-Residence Cody Caetano has invited award-winning author, poet, and scholar Kawika Guillermo to visit Edmonton and will host them for two events that we invite you to join us for!
Talk at the U of A: "Writing Machphrasis: On the Poetic Machinations of Video Games"
In this talk, Guillermo will discuss the pleasures, potentials, and unexpected failures of writing about video games.
Date: Thursday, October 30
Time: 3:30-4:30 PM
Location: Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17)
This event is free and open to the public.
Book Launch at Magpie Books: Of Floating Isles: On Growing Pains and Video Games
For more information about these events and Kawika Guillermo's work, click HERE.
Writer-in-Residence Cody Caetano at LitFest: "Close Encounters of the Native Kind"
In partnership with LitFest, the CLC is hosting author, literary agent, and 2025-26 U of A Writer-in-Residence Cody Caetano for his talk "Close Encounters of the Native Kind."
Date: Wednesday, October 15
Time: 12:00-1:00 PM
Location: Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17), U of A
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information about this event and the full schedule for LitFest 2025, click HERE.
Reading + Conversation: "Extraordinary Ordinary Notes" with Christina Sharpe
In collaboration with Dr. Michael A. Bucknor, the CLC is hosting Dr. Christina Sharpe, Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities, for a Reading and Conversation event about her book Ordinary Notes.
Date: Wednesday, October 1
Time: 12:00-1:30 PM
Location: Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17), U of A
This event is free and open to the public. Copies of Christina Sharpe's books will be for sale at the event, and light refreshments will be provided.
For more information about Professor Sharpe, her work, and other events happening on campus during her visit, click HERE.
Reading + Conversation Recording: Multi- and Translingual Poetry and Poetics
This final instalment in the CLC’s 2024-25 "Polyphonies" Series features poets, translators, and scholars Klara du Plessis, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, Erín Moure, and Odile Cisneros. These multilingual writers contemplate the effects and objectives of languages intersecting in poetry, through translations of and readings in Afrikaans, Czech, English, French, Persian, and Portuguese.
For more information and to listen, visit our Podcast page.
Reading + Conversation Recording: Jami Reimer and shalan joudry
From the CLC Readings and Conversations series comes a new podcast episode featuring interdisciplinary composer Jami Reimer, who discusses her bioacoustic opera based on the metamorphic life of a frog, and Mi’kmaw storyteller shalan joudry, whose multilingual experimental work reflects on “grief, truth-seeking, and communal healing.”
For more information and to listen, visit our Podcast page.
Magazine Archive: Eighteen Bridges magazine is now available on Substack
Check out the Eighteen Bridges magazine archive! The magazine was a project under the banner of the CLC from 2010 to 2019, and the legacy of many of the stories published in the magazine lives on through the quality of the storytelling. In lieu of maintaining a website or creating a new one for a magazine that no longer exists, co-founder Curtis Gillespie has decided to archive the issues on a Substack. The plan is to post all 13 issues of Eighteen Bridges, along with some brief commentary about each issue.
Support the CLC / Soutenir le CLC
With your help, the CLC can continue to foster communities of readers, writers, teachers, students, and scholars of Canadian literature and its diverse literary landscapes.
The University of Alberta is recognized as a charitable organization and will issue tax receipts for donations over $25. You can donate quickly and easily through the link below.