Colson Whitehead presents Cool Machine

Join Ottawa Writers Festival for an evening with two-time Pulitzer winner COLSON WHITEHEAD for a conversation with Adrian Harewood on Cool Machine, an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings to life 1980s New York in the magnificent final volume of his Harlem Trilogy.

Ticket purchase includes a signed copy of the hardcover provided by Perfect Books. Additional books will be available for purchase

1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife Elizabeth a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.

1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime, Pepper, is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you’re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence—Pepper is a native speaker.

1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.

Colson Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to the Meadowlands, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead’s vivid characters, it’s what’s below the surface that reveals the truth.

Double Book Launch for Sara Landreth and Julie Murray

We are happy to support the double book launch for Sara Landreth and Julie Murray, two local academics launching their latest works on eighteenth-century studies!

About the books:

JULIE MURRAY, Mary Wollstonecraft Against Modernity:

For many, Mary Wollstonecraft functions as Western feminism's indisputable origin point and anchor. Once scorned as scandalous, later rehabilitated by the Victorians as a figure of hardworking traditional femininity, Wollstonecraft is today incorporated into a story of feminism as the West's cherished export to the rest of the world.

 With Wollstonecraft as its guide, Mary Wollstonecraft Against Modernity argues that Western feminism and global modernity are not the natural intellectual and political allies they have long been made out to be, but have in fact been at odds for over two centuries. Julie Murray explores those aspects of Wollstonecraft's work that call us to understand modernity, and the form of white womanhood it celebrates, as a problem with which feminism must contend.

Refracting the history of feminism through the reception of Wollstonecraft's life and thought by contemporaries such as Mary Hays and Elizabeth Hamilton, as well as by twentieth-century thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Betty Friedan, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, Murray offers a potent critique of how liberal feminism tells celebratory tales of extraordinary women in part to manage its own contradictions. Reclaiming Wollstonecraft from the genre of female biography, this book ultimately finds her an astute critic of Western feminism itself.

SARA LANDRETH, Wanton Motion in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture:

How can words capture what it feels like to be a body moving through space? In charting how the aesthetics of motion mattered to eighteenth-century literature, print culture, theatre, and legal debates, Sara Landreth refocuses the period's fascination with the abstraction of 'selfhood' toward embodied kinetic processes that reveal the fictionality of selfhood altogether. This important study makes the case for wantonness as an aesthetic category in its own right, one that captures quasi-intentional actions and vital but indeterminate forms of agency in a wide range of genres, from it-narratives and harlequinade flipbooks to travel novels and fiction about slaveocracy. Fresh readings of works by Cavendish, Hogarth, Dennis, Johnson, Diderot, Sterne, Smollett, and Wilberforce illuminate how authors from 1650 to 1810 radically redefined how characters and plots could and should move.

Library and Archives Canada presents Renshi by Roseann O'Reilly Runte

Join us for the launch of Renshi by Roseann O’Reilly Runte, presented by Library and Archives Canada and the University of Ottawa Press. 

Master poets Ooka Makoto, Shuntaro Tanikawa and Kim Yong-Jik were joined by Canadian Roseann O’Reilly Runte in Tokyo on a very warm August day in 1991 to compose a linked-verse poem. It was also the day the Soviet Parliament was stormed, foreshadowing the end of the Cold War. Not knowing the future, the poets chose to celebrate the lasting power of words to survive discord and violence. They believed the beauty of poetry would inspire and transcend time and national and linguistic borders. They followed an ancient Japanese poetic form called renga, and they wrote simultaneously in English, French, Japanese and Korean. 

This volume includes the original recording made by the poets, artwork by Sylviane De Roquebrune inspired by the poems and music by Casey Sokol. The renga form dates from medieval times when poets came together at a castle to compose in the course of a single day linked verses that responded to each other, creating a poetic dialogue. We believe this to be the sole renga ever composed completely in four languages at once. 

Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of the celebration of such a unique work! 

ROSEANN O'REILLY RUNTE, awarded the François Coppée poetry prize from the Académie française, has served as professor, university president and head of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. She currently dedicates her time and thoughts to writing and consulting. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Leilani Farha

Housing has become a crisis of humanity—one created by design and decades in the making. Join Ottawa Writers Festival for a conversation with Leilani Farha, whose CBC Massey Lecture is Housing Inc. A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home.

LEILANI FARHA has been in more homes than most people will ever visit—a four-door sedan in San Diego, a lean-to by railway tracks in Lagos, a windowless motel room in Paris, a tent on a Toronto beach. What people tell her first is never that they need housing, it’s that they want to be treated like human beings. Housing Inc. explains why they have to ask.

Writing from the centre of global housing debates, Farha reckons with a crisis four decades in the making, engineered by dictators, presidents, and prime ministers, and perfected by the financial firms that turn homes into sites of extraction. The same logic that justifies dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of their lands and resources now prices out a generation, displaces tenants, destroys communities, and disappears homeless people.

This crisis of humanity plays out in every country in the world. With fierce clarity, Farha argues that the fight for home requires not just better policy, but a different ideology altogether—one rooted in law, humanity, and imagination—where every person counts.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Shari Lepena

Join Ottawa Writers Festival as we celebrate Getting Away with Murder, the tenth thriller from New York Times bestselling author Shari Lapena and the 10th anniversary of her breakout novel, The Couple Next Door!

Jill and Ted adore their New York brownstone the way others adore their children. They have carefully, expensively, made every inch of it their own. It reflects who they are, their status and tastes. With the grand mahogany staircase and state-of-the-art kitchen, it is the stuff of glossy magazines and real-estate dreams. It is their sanctuary.

So when Ted's inheritance runs out and he makes a bad investment, they panic. How can they protect their beloved home and enviable lifestyle?

The answer is obvious. Or at least, it is obvious to Jill and Ted. The death of one wealthy family member—from whom they stand to inherit millions—could solve all their problems. Together, they will get away with murder.

As long as they trust each other.

As long as neither makes a mistake.

As long as there are no surprises . . .

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Colin James

Join Ottawa Writers Festival for a conversation with Colin James, one of Canada's most beloved musicians, on his new book, Playing the Changes, a poignant, humourous, and heartfelt coming-of-age memoir.

From the prairies of Saskatchewan to sharing the stage with some of the most important musicians of all time, Colin James is one of Canada’s greatest talents. In Playing the Changes, Colin looks back at his early years, as he emerged as a full-formed musical talent in his teens. Growing up in Saskatchewan, the son of social worker parents, Colin was always surrounded by music—from the records played at home, to the folk clubs in Regina and the Quaker gatherings his family attends throughout the province. At a very young age, he picked up his older brother's guitar and taught himself to play along to some of the vintage blues records he adored so much. He ultimately mastered the mandolin and penny whistle as well; before long he was sitting in with folk bands whose members were much older than him.

Readers also will follow young Colin as he tries to navigate and understand the world around him. Along the way, we meet Colin the hypochondriac, who is convinced that any cold he has may be fatal; Colin the romantic, who wears his heart on his sleeve; and Colin the compulsive cleaner, whose efforts to keep a tidy house are an attempt to prevent the impending separation and divorce of his parents.

Throughout his teenage years, Colin would perform in venues throughout Saskatchewan and Winnipeg where he was under the legal age to enter, let alone perform. All of that road work would lead to the pivotal moment of his life: at the age of eighteen, with a day's notice, Colin is asked to put together a band and open for legendary guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan in Saskatoon. That performance would go on to lead to a remarkable friendship between the two musicians.

Culminating just before the release of Colin’s debut album in 1988, Playing the Changes is a celebration of music and the joy of playing it, and of one of the most remarkable childhoods in Canadian music history.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Robert Harris

Join Ottawa Writers Festival for a conversation with ROBERT HARRIS, the internationally bestselling author of Conclave, Precipice and the acclaimed Cicero trilogy, on his latest, Agrippa, a sweeping new political thriller about the general who built an empire—and paid the ultimate price. 

Agrippa is Robert Harris’s monumental return to the world of ancient Rome on the edge of dictatorship, a novel for our times. In the turbulent aftermath of Julius Caesar’s assassination, two young men seize the chance to shape the future of Rome: Octavius, Caesar’s cunning heir, and his brilliant common-born ally, Marcus Agrippa. Together, they fight for control of the empire, navigate shifting loyalties, vanquish their enemies at Philippi, and crush the fabled lovers Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, securing a new empire that will change the world.

But power never comes without a price. Decades later Octavius rules supreme, now as Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, while Agrippa, soldier, statesman and builder of Rome, finds himself betrayed by those closest to him and exiled from the empire he helped create. Alone on the Bay of Naples, he turns to his memories, revisiting the wars, alliances and deceptions that forged his destiny.

Sweeping from the blood-soaked battlefields of the Republic to the marble corridors of imperial power, Agrippa is a masterful novel of ambition and statecraft, loyalty and betrayal, and how even the greatest empires are built on fragile bonds between men.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here.

An Evening with David Sedaris

DAVID SEDARIS is one of America’s pre-eminent humour writers. He is a master of satire and one of today’s most observant writers.  

In The Land and Its People, his first new collection since Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris reflects on what it means to be a foreigner, a brother, a lifelong friend. He tries on the role of caretaker after his boyfriend Hugh’s hip replacement surgery, and both succeeds and fails. He buys his sister a cape and discusses his brother with a jaded Duolingo bot. He walks dozens of miles with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tyre. Ever adding to his list of “Countries I Have Been To,” he rides a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest’s cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo. 

There is sadness here—scrolling through his address book, he realises how many dear friends are now deceased—but also delight: he revels in authors’ biographies, the malapropism that becomes a decades-long inside joke, and a pair of well-made cotton underpants. He is bitten by a dog. A train passenger vomits in his face. A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn’t. Look how hard it is to be alive! 

Throughout these essays—at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound—Sedaris shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity this fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here. 

Ottawa Writers Festival presents R.F. Kuang

Ottawa Writers Festival is thrilled to welcome R.F. KUANG the acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author of Katabasis and Yellowface, back to Ottawa with her latest novel, Taipei Story, a wryly humorous and profoundly moving coming-of-age novel that grapples with grief, language, and culture shock—all set against the backdrop of an unforgettable summer in Taipei.

PLEASE NOTE: In Person tickets include a pre-signed, deluxe limited-edition copy of Tapei Story provided by Perfect Books.

College freshman Lily Chen is off to spend the summer in Taipei at an intensive language program like so many Chinese American students before her, hoping to connect with the culture she inherited but never fully understood. But a promising start quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate is driving her insane, and a reckless trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon has her classmates viciously gossiping. She feels adrift, a foreigner in a country she thought would feel like home.

Then shocking news arrives: Lily’s grandfather has passed away. The loss forces her to grapple with now-unanswerable questions about her family history. As Lily grieves, she’s drawn into a journey of self-discovery—piecing together memories, stories, and silences over a series of hilarious and devastating attempts at connection.

Taipei Story asks: What if the diaspora fantasy of homecoming never comes true? What if learning a language can’t bring you any closer to the people you’re trying to reach? What if you search for your family’s history, but your family doesn’t want to share? What if you wait too long to ask the right questions? As Lily struggles for answers, her summer becomes a poignant search for understanding—of herself, her family, and the meaning of home.

More details and tickets here.

LiterAsian 2026 Ottawa, Re-Generation: Carrying Memory, Crafting Story

We are excited to be partnering once again with The Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop to bring LiterAsian to Ottawa, for LiterAsian 2026 Ottawa, Re-Generation: Carrying Memory, Crafting Story.

Join us in welcoming the following authors to the store, in conversation with friend of the store and author of Dandelion, Jamie Chai Yun Liew.

LESLIE SHIMOTAKAHARA is an award-winning author of three novels and a memoir, as well as numerous short fiction and essays. She won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize (2012) and has been shortlisted for the K.M. Hunter Artist Award. Her writing has appeared in the National Post, World Literature Today, and other anthologies and periodicals. She holds a PhD in English from Brown University, and lives in Toronto with her husband. We will be celebrating the launch of her novel The Breakwater.

CHUQIAO YANG’s poems have appeared in The Unpublished City, Ricepaper, Arc Poetry Magazine, Canthius, Prism, Grain, CV2, Room, and on CBC Radio. She was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and her chapbook, Reunions in the Year of the Sheep, won the bpNichol Chapbook Award. The Last to the Party is her first full-length collection and was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. Yang lives in Ottawa.

WILEY WEI-CHIUN HO has published short stories and personal essays in PRISM international, Ricepaper Magazine, River Teeth, Room and several anthologies, and was a finalist for the 2021 Jim Wong-Chu Award for Emerging Writers (presented by the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop). She lives in North Vancouver, BC, where she likes to grow Asian vegetables in her front yard. The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is her first book.

JAMIE CHAI YUN LIEW is the recipient of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop. She is a lawyer and law professor specializing in immigration, refugee, and citizenship law and the creator of the podcast Migration Conversations. Dandelion is her first novel. She lives in Ottawa with her family.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Rachel Reid

Join Ottawa Writers Festival for a special evening with bestselling author RACHEL REID as we celebrate the deluxe hardcover release of Heated Rivalry!

This ticketed event will feature a 45-minute moderated conversation with Rachel, followed by an extended audience Q&A. Each ticket includes a copy of the new Heated Rivalry deluxe hardcover edition, complete with a signed custom bookplate, provided by Perfect Books.

The deluxe hardcover edition of Heated Rivalry features metallic sprayed edges, special cover effects, a stamped foil case, and full-color endpapers showcasing never-before-seen character art, making it the ultimate collector’s edition of Rachel Reid’s beloved enemies-to-lovers romance and global sensation.

Thanks to support from Carleton University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, a limited number of free Carleton tickets are available to students. Free tickets DO NOT include the book.

Please note that there will be no signing line or meet and greet at this event. Additional books will be available for purchase on-site from our friends at Perfect Books.

We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

More details and tickets here.

An Evening with Zadie Smith

ZADIE SMITH, born in North London in 1975 to an English father and Jamaican mother, studied English at Cambridge and graduated in 1997. Her debut novel, White Teeth, became an international bestseller, winning major awards including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It has been translated into more than twenty languages, adapted for television and the stage, and recognised by the New York Public Library and the New York Times as one of the most important books of the century. 

Her second novel, The Autograph Man, won the 2003 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Smith was twice named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. On Beauty won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and appears on several lists of the best books of the 21st century. NW was shortlisted for major prizes, named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2012, and adapted by the BBC. Swing Time was a New York Times bestseller, and her most recent novel, The Fraud, was widely acclaimed as one of the best books of 2023. 

Smith’s story collection Grand Union received multiple shortlist honours, and her play The Wife of Willesden won the 2022 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award. She has published several essay collections, with Dead and Alive forthcoming in 2025. Her honours include the Langston Hughes Medal, the St. Louis Literary Award, and the Bodley Medal. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and lives in London. 

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here.