Fifteen Dogs Unleashed, From Page to Stage: A Creative Discussion

The National Arts Centre presents what is sure to be a fascinating discussion about the adaption of book to plays. Join author Andre Alexis of Fifteen Dogs and playwright/director Marie Farsi for an in-depth look at the creative journey. Moderated by Nina Lee Aquino.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Elbows Up! Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance

Ottawa Writers Festival presents David Moscrop, Carol Off and Elamin Abdelmahmoud for a special evening spotlighting responses to the United State's shocking annexation threats and the swell of Canadian national unity that followed.

Inspired by the 1968 collection The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S., which was edited by Al Purdy and curated amidst the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Elbows Up!  is the book for our generation’s own moment of crisis, featuring the words of leading cultural figures speaking candidly on America, on Canada, and on the malleable contours of a national narrative still taking hold.

Tickets and more details available at writersfestival.org

With book sales by Perfect Books.

Arc Poetry Magazine presents the Archibald Lampman Finalists

Join us in celebrating Ottawa's wealth of fantastic local poets! Arc Poetry Magazine presents readings by the three finalists for this year's Archibald Lampman Award:

-Manahil Bandukwala, Heliotropia (Brick Books)
-Emily Austin, Gay Girl Prayers (Brick Books)
-AJ Dolman, Crazy / Mad (Gordon Hill Press)

Ottawa Public Library presents Jenny Kay Dupuis

The Ottawa Public Library presents an author talk and discussion with Jenny Kay Dupuis, the author of I Am Not a Number and Heart Berry Bling. This event is in English only. 

Dr. Jenny Kay Dupuis is of Anishinaabe/Ojibway ancestry and a proud member of Nipissing First Nation. She is an educator, researcher, artist, and speaker who works full-time supporting the advancement of Indigenous education. Jenny's interest in her family's past and her commitment to teaching about Indigenous issues through literature drew her to co-write I am Not a Number, her first children's book. She lives in Toronto.

More information and tickets available here

With book sales by Perfect Books.

Emma Donoghue at Ottawa Writers Festival

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Emma Donoghue for a conversation about her latest bestseller, The Paris Express.

The Paris Express is set over a single day, as the morning train travels from the Normandy coast to the capital. Men, women, and children from all over the world take their seats in the passenger cars, which are divided by wealth and status. Among the passengers is an anarchist intent on destruction, a young boy travelling alone, a pregnant woman fleeing her home village for the anonymity of the big city, a medical student who suspects a girl may have a fatal disease, and the railway crew, devoted to the train, to the company, and to each other.

Based on an 1895 catastrophe that was captured in a series of surreal photographs, The Paris Express is a thrilling ride, full of the politics, fears, and chaos of an era not unlike our own.

With book sales by Perfect Books. More details and tickets here!

Joanna Cockerline and Kevin Andrew Heslop Cross-Canada Book Tour

Two Canadian authors, CBC Literary Awards prize winning writer Joanna Cockerline, author of the new novel Still, and internationally-renowned filmmaker and writer Kevin Andrew Heslop, author of The Writing on the Wind’s Wall: Dialogues about Medical Assistance is Dying, are offering a free public reading at Perfect Books on September 29, 2025, open to all. They will be joined by special guest poet Kevin Shaw.

Cockerline and Heslop—both releasing their books in September with the Canadian indie press The Porcupine’s Quill, which has enjoyed decades of award-winning success—are touring across Canada to connect with audiences about issues close to their hearts.

Heslop’s The Writing on the Wind’s Wall: Dialogues about Medical Assistance is Dying is a testament to what a Canadian community felt and believed in 2020 about living, and dying, together. Informed by his familial connections and Heslop’s decade of experience facilitating long-form dialogue with writers and artists around the world, the non-fiction work listens to the voices of those affected by Medical Assistance in Dying.

Cockerline’s novel Still is set amid the vibrancy and precarity the unhoused and street-level sex work communities, and follows the story of a woman who lives and works on the streets of Kelowna, BC, who is looking for a fellow sex worker who has gone missing. The novel explores survival, friendship, and what it means to find a home—especially within one’s self. Ultimately, Still is a story of resiliency, community, and hope. The novel is informed by Cockerline’s own experiences as a long-time street outreach volunteer and co-founder of a non-profit street outreach organization.

Merilyn Simonds Book Launch for Walking with Beth

We are delighted to welcome Merilyn Simonds in conversation with Elizabeth Hay for the launch of her newest book, Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-year-old Friend.

Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life.

MERILYN SIMONDS is author of twenty books, most recently Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay, an innovative memoir/biography of Lawrence, an extraordinary self-trained ornithologist who became one of Canada’s greatest naturalists. Born in Winnipeg, Simonds grew up in small-town Ontario and Brazil. She published her first book in 1979 at the age of 29, and since then her work has been anthologized and published internationally in eight countries. She writes in a wide variety of genres—personal essay, memoir, travel, literary fiction (such as the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice) and creative nonfiction, including The Convict Lover, which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction. In 2017, Project Bookmark Canada installed a plaque on the site of the former Kingston Penitentiary rock quarry to honour the place of The Convict Lover in Canada’s literary landscape.

ELIZABETH HAY is the Giller Prize-winning author of six novels, including Late Nights on Air, His Whole Life, and A Student of Weather. Her memoir All Things Consoled won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction; her story collection Small Change was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. A former radio broadcaster, she spent a number of years in Mexico and New York City, and makes her home in Ottawa.

Book Signing with William Alexander

Don't miss the opportunity for a meet-and-greet with National Book Award winner William Alexander, who will be in store chatting with customers about Sunward, a cozy debut science fiction novel. This story of found family follows a planetary courier training adolescent androids in a solar system grappling with interplanetary conflict after a devastating explosion on Earth’s moon.

WILLIAM ALEXANDER writes unrealisms for readers of all ages. His work has won the National Book Award, the Eleanor Cameron Award, the Librarian Favorites Award, the Teacher Favorites Award, two CBC Best Children’s Book of the Year Awards, and two Junior Library Guild Selections. As a small child he honestly thought that his Cuban American family came from the lost island of Atlantis.

Book Launch for Catherine Lang's Embedded

Please join us in welcoming Catherine Lang to Perfect Books to launch the autobiography Embedded: The Irreconcilable Nature of War, Loss, and Consequence.

When Catherine Lang's niece and Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang was killed while embedded with Canadian troops near Kandahar City, Afghanistan, in 2009, her world shifted.

In the aftermath, Lang and her family experienced the rigour of military ceremony. As she pieced together fragments from Michelle’s last days, Lang connected with the loved ones of soldiers who died alongside Michelle. She met with those injured by the roadside bomb, including the lone civilian woman talking to Michelle at the time of the blast, discovering in her and others a steely resilience to carry on and a more intimate understanding of the meaning of sacrifice. Suddenly thrust close to this aspect of Canadian society, Lang began to question previously held black-and-white views about military engagement, and she turned to writing as a way to understand the impact on her and her family, and to ensure that Michelle lived on in memory.

CATHERINE LANG worked as a community newspaper reporter and freelance writer at the outset of her writing career in the 1980s. In 1996, she published O-Bon in Chimunesu: A Community Remembered, a creative non-fiction work about the former Japanese-Canadian community on Vancouver Island, with Arsenal Pulp Press; O-Bon won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize at the 1997 BC Book Prizes. She later worked as an editor of provincial legislative debates and in treaty negotiations with Indigenous nations in BC. Lang lives in Victoria, BC.

Book Launch for Tamara Jong's Worldly Girls

We are excited to have Tamara Jong in the store, in conversation with Ellen Chang-Richardson, to launch her debut memoir, Worldly Girls, named by CBC as a top nonfiction pick for the fall!

Tamara Jong’s powerful memoir documents the slow unravelling of her connection to her faith and the tragic history of her fractured family, shining a light into the dark corners of memory that have haunted her well into adulthood.

TAMARA JONG is a Tiohtià:ke (Montréal) born writer of Chinese and European ancestry. Her work has been published in the Humber Literary Review, Room Magazine, and The Fiddlehead, and has been both long and shortlisted for various creative nonfiction prizes. She is a graduate of The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University, and a former member of Room Magazine's collective. She currently lives and works on Treaty 3 territory, the occupied and ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Guelph, ON). Worldly Girls is her first book.

ELLEN CHANG-RICHARDSON is an award-winning poet, hybrid genre writer, judicial assistant, and editor of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent. Co-founder of the experimental Riverbed Reading Series, they are a creative nonfiction editor for long con magazine and a member of Room’s editorial collective. Their debut collection, Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn), was shortlisted for the 2025 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Their second collection, Through the Eyes of Another, is forthcoming in Spring 2027.

Brit Griffin Launches The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien

We welcome Brit Griffin to the store to launch her latest book, The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien, a gothic tale from deep within the boreal forest. With special guest Charlie Angus!

Violence and greed have intruded into a wild and remote land. It’s 1907, and silver fever has drawn thousands of men into a fledgling mining camp in the heart of the wilderness. Modesto O’Brien, fortune-teller and detective, is there too - but he isn’t looking for riches. He’s seeking revenge. O’Brien soon finds himself entangled with the mysterious Nail sisters, Lucy and Lily. On the run from their past and headed for trouble, Lily turns to O’Brien when Lucy goes missing. But what should have been a straightforward case of kidnapping pulls O’Brien into a world of ancient myths, magic, and male violence. As he searches for Lucy, O’Brien fears that dark forces are emerging from the ravaged landscape. Mesmerized by a nightmarish creature stalking the wilderness, and haunted by his past, O’Brien struggles to maintain his grip on reality as he faces hard choices about loyalty, sacrifice, and revenge.

BRIT GRIFFIN is the author of the climate-fiction Wintermen trilogy (Latitude 46) and has written essays, musings, and articles for various publications. Griffin spent many years as a researcher for the Timiskaming First Nation, an Algonquin community in northern Quebec. She lives in Cobalt, northern Ontario, where she is the mother of three grown daughters. These days, she divides her time between writing and caring for her unruly yard.

CHARLIE ANGUS is a nationally recognized politician, author, and musician. He has published nine books and is the recipient of numerous writing awards, including the Trillium Book Award finalist Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower. Angus has served in the Canadian Parliament for twenty years. He has earned a national reputation as a fierce fighter for social justice and Indigenous rights. Angus was the founding member of Toronto punk band L'etranger. He is the leader of the roots band Grievous Angels; their ninth album is Last Call for Cinderella. Angus lives in Cobalt, Ontario, with his wife, author Brit Griffin. They have three daughters.

Bywords John Newlove Poetry Awards

Join us for an unforgettable evening of poetry and music. Amanda Earl hosts the 2025 John Newlove Poetry Award reading and ceremony. Bywords.ca will be launching After all this hurt, Mahaila Smith’s chapbook with readings by this year's John Newlove Poetry Award recipient and honourable mentions, and music by Benoît Christie.

After a short break, it’s music and poetry performed by Domina Eliahou and Stuart Ross. Fresh off a breathtaking, improvisational performance at the Hillside Festival, the duo make their first appearance in Ottawa, where Eliahou will improvise an ever-changing eclectic soundscape into which Ross will plug his poems, bend his poems, and spit out sound poetry.

Up next, Arc Poetry will announce the winner of The Archibald Lampman Award which recognizes an outstanding book of English-language poetry by an author living in the National Capital Region. The 2025 Lampman Award finalists are: Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin, Heliotropia by Manahil Bandukwala, and Crazy/Mad by AJ Dolman. The jury for the 2025 award were Simina Banu (Quebec), Jake Byrne (Ontario), and Jess Housty (British Columbia).

The evening concludes with the Ottawa launch for Margo LaPierre’s second collection, Ajar. These poems navigate the physical and psychological dangers of womanhood through the flattening lens of mood disorder. Psychosis isn’t the opposite of reality—it’s another perceptual system. From the emergency room to the pharmacy to the fertility clinic to the dis/comfort of home and memory, this collection humanizes bipolar psychosis.

More details and tickets to this FREE event at writersfestival.org

With book sales by Perfect Books.

Premee Mohamed launch for The First Thousand Trees

We can't wait to bring you the launch of the third and final installment of Premee Mohamed's fantastic climate-fiction novella series, The First Thousand Trees (ECW Press), with special guest Kate Heartfield! This is not an event to be missed for science fiction and fantasy readers! Find out why Booklist calls Mohamed “one of the most unique and engaging voices in genre fiction.” 

After making a grievous mistake that ended in death, Henryk Mandrusiak feels increasingly ostracized within his own community, and after the passing on of his parents and the departure of his best friend, Reid, there is little left to tie him to the place he calls home. Henryk does something he never expected: he sets out into the harsh wilds alone, in search of far-flung family. He finds his uncle’s village, but making a life for himself in this unfriendly new place — rougher and more impoverished than the campus where he grew up — isn’t easy. Henryk strives to carve out a place of his own but learns that some corners of his broken world are darker than he could have imagined.

PREMEE MOHAMED is a Nebula-, World Fantasy–, and Aurora Award–winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, AB. She is the author of the Beneath the Rising series of novels, as well as several novellas, and her short fiction has appeared in many venues.

KATE HEARTFIELD is the author of several novels, including her latest, The Tapestry of Time, and the international bestseller The Embroidered Book. She has won the Aurora Award for Best Novel three times, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, World Fantasy, Crawford, Locus, Sunburst, Scribe and Ottawa Book awards. Kate is a former journalist who lives in Ottawa, Canada with a black cat named Minerva.

Double Book launch with Katie Welch and James Cairns

Join BC author Katie Welch and Paris, Ontario author James Cairns to celebrate the release of their new books from Wolsak & Wynn!

About their books:

Ladder to Heaven by Katie Welch: In 2045 an earthquake ravages the Pacific Coast of North America and the world shifts. Suddenly people and animals can understand each other, while the chaos of climate change combines with the destruction of the earthquake in terrifying ways. Inland, where she should be safe, Del Samara finds her life spiralling out of control. Struggling with addiction and with her ranch in ashes around her, Del decides her family would be better off without her. Leaving her daughters behind, she retreats to her father’s fishing cabin with her dog, Manx. When she emerges three years later, she finds the world since the earthquake has become a very different place and she begins a dangerous journey to Vancouver Island to find her family and, perhaps, find peace.

In Crisis, On Crisis by James Cairns: In 2022, the Collins Dictionary announced that its word of the year was “permacrisis,” which it defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.” Have we reached a breaking point, arrived at the moment of truth? If so, what now? If not, why do so many people say we’re living through a period of unprecedented crises? Drawing on social research, pop culture and literature, as well as his experience as an activist, father and teacher, James Cairns explores the ecological crisis, Trump’s return to power amid the so-called crisis of democracy, his own struggle with addiction and other moments of truth facing us today. In a series of insightful essays that move deftly between personal, theoretical and historical approaches he considers not only what makes something a crisis, but also how to navigate the effect of these destabilizing times on ourselves, on our families and on the world.

KATIE WELCH lives in Kamloops and on Cortes Island, BC. Her debut novel MAD HONEY was nominated for the 2023 OLA Evergreen Prize. She is a two-time alumnus of the Banff Centre and was a finalist for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize.

JAMES CAIRNS lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. He is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements.  James has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism and the Journal of Canadian Studies. 

An Evening with Louise Penny - SOLD OUT**

*THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT*

The National Arts Centre is pleased to present an evening with Louise Penny, including an on-stage interview with the author and launch of her latest book in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, The Black Wolf. Books will be available for purchase on site courtesy of Perfect Books.

Margo Pierre launch for Ajar

Join Margo LaPierre for the Halloween launch of her second poetry collection, Ajar, alongside Jason Purcell and Nicola Vulpe, and hosted by Ellen Chang-Richardson. And don't miss the afraid-of-ghosts open mic or the best ghost costume contest!

The poems in Ajar navigate the physical and psychological dangers of womanhood through the flattening lens of mood disorder. Psychosis isn’t the opposite of reality—it’s another perceptual system. If neurotypical thought measures the world in centimetres, this collection measures it in inches, gallons, amperes. Ajar celebrates radical recovery from gendered violence and psychotic paradigm shifts, approaching madness through prismatic inquiry. As time converges within us, we find new ways to heal and grow. From the emergency room to the pharmacy to the fertility clinic to the dis/comfort of home and memory, this collection humanizes bipolar psychosis.

MARGO LAPIERRE is a writer and freelance literary editor. With multi-genre work published in The Ex-Puritan, CV2, Room, PRISM, and Arc, among others, she has won national awards for her poetry, fiction, and editing. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Ajar is her second poetry collection.