Book Signing with Mike Hickey

Join Mike Hickey for a book signing and celebration of his book, When Basketball Was A Game.

About the book: 

In Hempstead, New York, a basketball coach knew the real game was survival.

In 1961, an eighteen-year-old from Hempstead, New York stepped into an unexpected role: founding coach of a brand-new Salvation Army basketball program. His name was Don Ryan—and his journey was just beginning.

For over six decades, Ryan used his influence as a teacher, coach, and local politician to make a difference. His mantra, “Carry the books as well as the ball,” reminded every player that education and character came first. His steady leadership helped shape pro athletes, business leaders, and community role models, leaving a legacy that reached far beyond basketball.

During his remarkable career, Hempstead’s teams captured three National Championships and amassed more than 3,000 victories. Yet it wasn’t the trophies that mattered most. It was the lessons in sportsmanship, discipline, perseverance, and hope that forever changed the course of countless young lives. This book is a celebration of a man who turned basketball into a force for hope and transformation.

Book Signing with A.V. Howland

Join local author A.V. Howland for a meet and greet about her book Jumping to Conclusions, the first book in the Fanta Delaney series.

Young Fanta Delaney loves horses. Ever since pony club days, she’s crushed on handsome Greg and followed his show jumping career from afar. Now, she’s a junior writer at the local paper north of Toronto, desperate to prove herself. Can she combine her skills as a reporter with her knowledge of the horse world to find out who killed her lustrous hero?

A.V. Howland is an award-winning feature writer and newspaper editor who continues to work in daily journalism, now with a hint of mystery and mayhem on the side. She grew up riding horses and now lives in Ottawa, Canada with two rescue dogs. Of course, she's always looking for ways to get back in the saddle.

Book Signing with Glenn McInnes

Join Glenn McInnes to talk about his book, Lessons in Philanthropy: The Legacy of Barb McInnes.

Barbara McInnes’s work in philanthropy has touched countless lives, creating ripples of change that continue to grow. This book is a heartfelt exploration of her journey, through the eyes of those who experienced her mentorship, kindness, and transformative vision. This book offers a unique perspective on what it truly means to lead with purpose.

Barb’s dedication to philanthropy has left an indelible mark on individuals, communities, and the world at large. From grassroots movements to global initiatives, Barb’s work speaks volumes about the impact one life can have. 

Versefest Day 1

Join us at Club Saw for Day 1 of VerseFest featuring poets like Olivia Tapiero, Robyn Sarah, and more!

More details here: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/events

Versefest Day 2

VerseFest Day 2 kicks off at the Arts Court Black Box with tons of writers, such as Gwen Aube, T. Liem, and more!

Details here: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/events?date=2026-03-25

Zena Sharman launches Staying Power

Join author Zena Sharman to celebrate the launch of her memoir Staying Power, with special guest Alexander McClelland, author of Criminalized Lives: HIV and Lgeal Violence. Toegher, they'll explore themes of queer kinship, grief, outlaw sexualities, and the power of documenting our lives and telling our stories through art and memoir.

ZENA SHARMAN is an essayist and non-fiction writer whose work explores themes of community, identity, and care. She is the editor of several anthologies, including The Care We Dream Of  and the Lambda Literary award-winning The Remedy (both Arsenal Pulp Press). Staying Power is her debut memoir.

ALEXANDER MCCLELLAND is an Associate Professor at the Carleton Institute of Criminology and the author of Criminalized Lives: HIV and Legal Violence.

David Suzuki and Tara Cullis – What You Won't Do for Love

“What’s love got to do with it?” A lot, according to David Suzuki.

After a lifetime devoted to climate activism, internationally-renowned environmentalists David Suzuki and Tara Cullis take to the stage in an intimate and inspiring theatre experience. A rare behind-the-scenes look at a life shaped by deep love, commitment, and the courage to act; they reflect on their extraordinary 50-year partnership in life and work.

Honest, warm, and thought-provoking, David and Tara share captivating stories, powerful insights, and heartfelt moments of humour as they celebrate their love for each other, their love of the planet, and love’s capacity to inspire action.

What You Won’t Do For Love is a personal and poetic performance, and a powerful reminder that change begins with connection.

“We’d love to see you there!”
Tara and David

With book sales by Perfect Books

More details and tickets here: https://shenkmanarts.ca/en/david-suzuki-tara-cullis

VerseFest Day 3

VerseFest Day 3 moves back to Club Saw with an Urban Legends Slam and a Qu'Art feature with Misha Solomon, Emma McKenna, and an open mic!

Details: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/events?date=2026-03-26

VerseFest Day 4

Friday Night at VerseFest moves to Happy Goat in Hintonburg, bringing you fantastic poets like Vera Hadzic, Hajer Mirwali, and more!

Details: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/events?date=2026-03-27

VerseFest Day 5, Plan 99

VerseFest presents Plan 99 at the Manx with Brandi Bird, Declan Ryan, and Stephanie Bolster!

Details: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/events?date=2026-03-28

Versefest Day 6

Come on out for a full day of poetry goodness! Karen Solie, Nada Gordon, Lydia Unsworth, and more, as well as the Hall of Honour presentation!

Details: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/events?date=2026-03-29

Caitlyn Paxson launches A Widow's Charm

Romance and fantasy fans, this one is for you! Come out to Caitlyn Paxson’s book launch for her highly anticipated debut book, A Widow’s Charm! Caitlyn will be in conversation with C.S.E. Cooney, author of Saint Death's Daughter.

In this rollicking fantasy romance, a widow attempts to resurrect her dead husband by blackmailing her rakish necromancer neighbor—only to find herself falling for him instead.

Lady Hildegarde Croft is accustomed to changes in position. After all, she rose from maidservant to lady of the manor when she married Lord Thorgoode Croft. But when he drops dead quite unexpectedly, the plans that would have protected her and the people of Croftholde die along with him. What's a widow to do?

Potential salvation arrives in the form of Lord Elmwood, who is fleeing the consequences of using his forbidden Charm to raise the dead. Now he's injured, destitute, and hiding out at the neighboring estate.

For Hilde, blackmailing Lord Elmwood to resurrect Thorgoode seems like the perfect solution. For Elmwood, beautiful Lady Croft seems like the ideal distraction from his troubles. The problem is, all she wants from him is the horrifying power he knows he can never use again.

CAITLYN PAXSON has a degree in writing and cultural history and has worked as the artistic director of storytelling performances, a harpist, a book reviewer, a nineteenth century jack-of-all-trades, a shepherdess and a fake Victorian spirit medium. She lives on Prince Edward Island with her husband and three orange cats. A Widow's Charm is her first book.

Dawn Steiner launch for Chromosome Ghosts

We hope you’ll join us for a lovely evening of poetry, celebrating the launch of Ottawa poet Dawn Steiner’s Chromosome Ghosts. She will be joined by guest readers Adrienne Stevenson, Marie-Andrée Auclair, and Susan Atkinson.

“The ghosts that Dawn Steiner summons in this elegant chapbook are elegiac and nostalgic, intimately exploring family and friendships. In these poems, childhood innocence is underscored by secrets, while a haunting sense of loss permeates the collection. Through beautifully detailed phrases and images, Chromosome Ghosts brings the reader with immediacy and finely crafted emotion into 1950s farmhouses, teenaged lakeside idylls and contemporary gardens and gravesides.”

—Frances Boyle, author of Openwork and Limestone and Light-carved Passages

DAWN STEINER began writing poetry under the guidance of Stephanie Bolster. She has collaborated on five chapbooks as well as a collection in book form called Oblique Strokes. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, Ferral, Juniper, Bywords, In/Words, CP Quarterly and flo magazine. She is the winner of Arc Magazine’s Diane Brebner Award (2019) and is currently working on a new collection of poems about Georgia O’Keeffe.

Pascale Lacelle Book Signing for Infinite Shores

Ottawa’s very own New York Times best selling fantasy author Pascale Lacelle comes to sign the conclusion to the Drowned Gods Trilogy, Infinite Shores! Stop by and chat!

Ninth House meets The Hazel Wood in this spellbinding conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Drowned Gods Trilogy, a gorgeous dark academia fantasy following a teen mage and her friends on their desperate quest through worlds and time!

Fate cannot be broken—not even by the gods who serve it.

Emory refuses to lose Romie again. Her friend’s fate hangs in the balance as the monstrous Clover plans to use her as a sacrifice to steal power from the deity Atheia—and make himself into a proper god. To stop Clover, Emory needs the help of Atheia’s dark counterpart, Sidraeus. Yet this enigmatic deity cannot be trusted, and if Emory is to ally with him, she must invoke an ancient magic to keep him tethered to her side.

Meanwhile, in the divine workshop of the god of balance, Baz learns he has a role to play in the coming fight to save the crumbling worlds and their weakening magics. Yet all he can think of is Kai and the gruesome fate that awaits him at Clover’s side—a fate, the god tells him, that is beyond even his reach. But Baz is determined to save Kai, even if he has to rewrite time itself.

As chaos reigns and the tides of a corrupted magic threaten to consume all, Emory and Baz must contend with mercurial gods, vengeful deities, and those hell-bent on eradicating Eclipse magic to save the people they love—and write an ending to their stories that defies fate itself.

PASCALLE LACELLE is a French Canadian author from Ottawa, Ontario. A longtime devourer of books, she started writing her own at age thirteen and quickly became enthralled by the magic of words. After earning her bachelor’s degree in French literature, she realized the English language is where her literary heart lies (but don’t tell any of her French professors that). When not lost in stories, she’s most likely daydreaming about food and travel, playing with her dog Roscoe, or trying to curate the perfect playlist for every mood. You can find her on Instagram and X @PascaleLacelle.

Aaron Kreuter on Lake Burntshore

Join Aaron Kreuter for a discussion on his timely and important novel, Lake Burntshore, a funny and emotionally resonant coming-of-age novel about one summer of momentous social and political change at a Jewish sleepover camp.

It’s the summer of 2013 and 21-year-old Ruby, a counselor at Camp Burntshore, can’t wait to supervise a rowdy cabin of 11-year-olds, smoke weed by the fire, and argue about which city make the best bagels. But when Brent, the camp owner’s son, hires Israeli soldiers to deal with a staffing shortfall, Ruby, a committed anti-Zionist, must decide if she’s willing to jeopardize her place at Burntshore to fight Brent over the contentious issues of Jewish belonging and settler colonialism, even as she finds herself falling in love with one of the soldiers, the sweetly handsome Etai.

Soon it becomes clear that the conflict is not just about the camp’s internal divisions but also about Burntshore’s relationship with the neighboring Black Spruce First Nation, strained because of Brent’s larger scheme to buy the Crown land surrounding the lake. As campers swim, go canoe tripping, and stage an over-the-top musical, Ruby has to contend with her feelings for Etai while simultaneously trying to save her beloved camp from greed and colonialism. A social satire, romance, and political commentary all in one, Lake Burntshore celebrates the contemporary Jewish world through its most iconic symbol — the often idyllic yet always dramatic summer camp.

AARON KREUTER is the author of five books, including the poetry collection Shifting Baseline Syndrome, a 2022 finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His work has been shortlisted for two Vine Awards for Jewish Literature, a Raymond Souster Award, and a ReLit Award. He lives in Toronto.

Ottawa Book Launch for Laurie D. Graham, Liz Johnston, and Aga Maksimowska

Join Laurie D. Graham, Liz Johnston and Aga Maksimowska at Anina's Café in Ottawa as they launch their newest books.

Books will be sold by Perfect Books.

Food will be sold by Anina's Café.

Register HERE

LAURIE D. GRAHAM grew up in Treaty 6 Territory, near amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), and she has lived in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, in the Territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg, since 2018, where she is a poet, an editor, and the publisher of Brick magazine, a journal of literary non-fiction based in Toronto. Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of poetry in Canada. Her second and third books, Settler Education and Fast Commute, were both nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Calling It Back to Me is Laurie's fourth collection.

LIZ JOHNSTON grew up in Revelstoke, B.C., and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review, Grain, The Antigonish Review, and The Cardiff Review. Johnston is an editor of Brick, A Literary Journal. The Fall-Down Effect is her debut novel.

AGA MAKSIMOWSKA is a writer whose debut novel Giant, about premature sexual development and the fall of Communism in Poland, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her stories and essays have been published in Brick, The New Quarterly, The Humber Literary Review, White Wall Review, The Globe and Mail, Today’s Parent, and longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. Becalming is her second novel. She lives in Toronto.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Whit Fraser

Join Ottawa Writers Festival for the launch of From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall, a sweeping memoir from veteran journalist and northern chronicler Whit Fraser, hosted by author Elizabeth Hay.

Presented in partnership with Library and Archives Canada. With book sales by Perfect Books.

Reserve your free ticket to this limited seating event here

Veteran journalist Whit Fraser recounts the stories behind the stories in this collection of tales drawn from fifty years of reporting on nation-changing events.

From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall traces a lifetime spent at the front lines of the events that shaped modern Canada. From his youth in Nova Scotia to decades reporting across the Arctic, Fraser offers a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of major national turning points—stories he reported on up close, but never fully had the chance to tell until now.

Fraser brings readers into the cold, stunned morning when the Soviet satellite Cosmos 954 rained nuclear debris across the Northwest Territories, igniting one of the most secretive international military operations in Canadian history. He revisits the tragedy of the Ocean Ranger, one of the world’s most advanced oil rigs that became the site of an unthinkable disaster. On Parliament Hill, he reports from inside the storm of the National Energy Program and the tense constitutional negotiations that affirmed Indigenous rights while dividing the nation anew.

Woven throughout is Fraser’s personal journey—his years living in the North, his friendships with leaders who transformed the political landscape, and his partnership with Mary Simon, whose swearing-in as Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General brings his story full circle.

Canadian Indie Bookstore Day!

It is the best day of the year!! Indie Bookstore Day! We will see you in the store for donut holes and other treats (yum!), free giveaways (ooh!), and prize draws (to be revealed!!). We love you and we love books. Let's have a great Indie Bookstore Day 2026! Shop Indie Forever!

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Zoe Dickinson, Frances Boyle, and Margo LaPierre

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Zoe Dickinson, Frances Boyle, and Margo LaPierre. Notably, let’s celebrate Zoe Dickinson’s brand-new, debut collection of poetry, Staff Picks for Invertebrates!

Originally from Aylmer, Quebec, ZOE DICKINSON lives on the unceded lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on Vancouver Island. She is a manager at Russell Books, and Artistic Director emerita of the Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series. Zoe has published two award-winning chapbooks: Public Transit and intertidal: poems from the littoral zone. She is co-editor with Kyeren Regehr of the anthology After: Poems in Dialogue, forthcoming from Caitlin Press. Staff Picks for Invertebrates is her first full-length collection of poetry.

FRANCES BOYLE is the author of an award-winning short story collection, a novella, and three books of poetry, most recently Openwork and Limestone. Her debut novel, Skin Hunger, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in fall 2026. Originally from the prairies, Frances has long been settled in Ottawa. She currently helps run VerseFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival, and is Vice-President of the League of Canadian Poets. Her poems and short fiction are widely published in literary magazines throughout North America and internationally.

MARGO LAPIERRE is a freelance book editor and poet. Her second poetry collection, Ajar, was published by Guernica Editions. She serves on Arc Poetry Magazine’s editorial board and is a member of the Ottawa-based poetry collective VII. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and a publishing certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. She has won national awards for her editing, fiction, and poetry and seeks to destigmatize bipolar disorder and psychosis.

Book Launch for Misha Solomon's My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet

We hope you’ll join us in celebration of Misha Solomon’s wonderful debut poetry collection with Brick Books, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet. He will be joined by local authors Manahil Bandukwala, Ben Ladouceur, and rob mclennan.

Two timelines intersect, weaving an alternate reality of queer ancestors, half-truths, domesticity, and desire in spite of past and present persecution.

What if the queer ancestor you always wondered about had really existed—and could speak to you across all time? When there’s only one document to be found in the archive, can our misheard or half-remembered family stories be enough? My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet is a daring, erotic, and humorous exploration of queer longing and Jewish possibility at the turn of two centuries. In a captivating series of narrative poems, Misha Solomon entwines an alternate memoir of his great-grandfather in pre-Holocaust Romania with a contemporary gay life in Montreal. With profound vision, voice, and craft, Solomon sets a new and powerful precedent for speculative poetic histories, allowing intimacy to find a way through memories real, imagined, and desired.

MISHA SOLOMON is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. He is the author of two chapbooks, Full Sentences (Turret House Press, 2022) and FLORALS (above/ground press, 2020), and his work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Arc, The Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Riddle Fence, and & Change. He completed an MA at Concordia University and a BA at Columbia University in New York City. My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet is his debut full-length collection.