Writers’ Trust event to see authors mull connections

As part of recognizing 50 years of literary programming, the Writers’ Trust of Canada has announced a four-city series of author talks — and Winnipeg is one of those cities.

The Conversations in Trust Winnipeg: Canadian Authors Make Sense of Our World event takes place Thursday, May 21 at WAG-Qaumajuq (300 Memorial Blvd.) from 6-8 p.m.

The event feature Winnipeg author (and Free Press reviewer) Zilla Jones (The World So Wide), Toronto-based author Tanya Talaga (The Knowing, Seven Fallen Feathers) and Winnipeg Michif author katherena vermette (The Break, The Strangers) hashing out what connects us as Canadians, who we are and who we might become.

Tickets are $20 and are available at wfp.to/ias.

● ● ●

National Poetry Month may be over, but the monthly Speaking Crow poetry reading series is keeping the verses flowing into May.

The long-running event has offered both live and virtual gatherings for aspiring poets, and for May returns to an in-person format at the St. Boniface Library (131 Provencher Blvd.), where Dr. Rehman Abdulrehman will serve as the month’s featured reader.

Abdulrehman is a Winnipeg author and psychologist whose published work includes the novel Jinn in the Family, the handbook Developing Anti-Racist Cultural Competence and, most recently (and pertinently), a contributor and editor of the anthology The Poetry of Angry Black and Brown People, published in October 2025.

Those looking to read at the event should arrive a bit early and can sign up at the event.

● ● ●

Canada’s financial landscape is deeply unequal, with the chasm between rich and poor continuing to grow — and the solution could be a wealth tax on the rich.

So argue a pair of authors, Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig and tax scholar Neil Brooks, in their book Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax, published in January by Dundurn Press.

The pair will launch the book at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location on Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

● ● ●

Thunder Bay author and philosopher Todd Dufresne lands at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Thursday at 7 p.m., when he’ll launch The Future Belongs to Those Who Fight: Climate Revolution for Beginners, published in March by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

In the book, Dufresne connects capitalism, Western values and climate change, and argues a call to action is required before the consequences of this connection prove permanently devastating.

Dufresne will be joined at the launch by Free Press reporter Dean Pritchard.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

● ● ●

Regina history professor Shelisa Klassen has dug deep into the history of Manitoba newspapers and the ways they contributed to the displacement and degradation of Indigenous and Métis communities in the province.

Published by University of Manitoba Press, Imprinting Empire: Land and Settler Colonialism in Manitoba Newspapers looks at nine Manitoba newspapers in the 1870s and how they repeatedly spread colonial narratives, shaping public opinion and hastening the dispossesion of the Indigenous population.

Klassen launches Imprinting Empire at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Friday at 7 p.m.; she’ll be joined by University of Manitoba professor and author Adele Perry.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

● ● ●

University of Winnipeg librarian (and Free Press book reviewer) Michael Dudley has been named editor of The Oxfordian, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship’s annual journal.

The organization explores evidence around the origins of the works of William Shakespeare — particularly whether they were written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

Dudley has published in The Oxfordian in the past, and in 2023 his book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

winnipegfreepress.com/bensigurdson