CANADA READS…

Monday March 30th, 7pm

Hope Community Church

(102 Queen st.)

AND

via livestream

Local presenters. Lively conversation and debate.

Featuring:

MASTER OF CEREMONIES: STEPHANIE BROWN

Kyl Chhatwal

Defending: Searching for Terry Punchout by Tyler Hellard

Kyl teaches English and Humanities at Champlain College. He holds an MA from Concordia in Creative Writing and English, and has published in literary journals across the country. His op-eds have been published in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, the Stanstead Journal and the Sherbrooke Record. Ontarian by birth, he became a Townshipper and Quebecker over ten years ago.

Rebecca Papucaru

Defending: A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

As Good a Place as Any, Rebecca Papucaru’s first novel, was named a 2025 Best Fiction Book of the Year by CBC Books. Her work has appeared in journals in Canada, the US, and Ireland, and several anthologies, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English. The Panic Room, her debut poetry collection, was awarded the 2018 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and was also a finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, while her short story “Yentas” was awarded The Malahat Review’s 2020 Novella Prize. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress received special commendation in The Novelry’s international Next Big Story competition. She teaches English at Champlain College.

Jane Baird Warren

Defending: The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor

A first-generation Canadian, Jane completed her MFA while living in Europe. Her stories and poetry have been featured on CBC radio and in more than a dozen literary magazines in North America and the UK. Her debut middle-grade novel, How to be a Goldfish, was a finalist in two national awards (The Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, and the Jean Little First-Novel Award), as well as the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Awards, the Saskatchewan Young Readers’ Choice Awards, and Ontario’s Forest of Reading’s Summer Reading List.

Jane is the Vice President of Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers.

Juliette Welch

Defending: Foe by Iain Reid

Juliette is a sci-fi writer and book reviewer based in Sherbrooke. She’s drawn to the world’s mysteries and the strange ways humanity chooses to explain them. With a degree in Film and Media Studies from Bishop’s University, she tends to fall headfirst into whatever universe crosses her path. She’s always up for weird literature, off-kilter discussion, or a new adventure.

David Winch

Defending: It’s Different This Time by Joss Richard

David Winch, a North Hatley-based writer-editor, writes a column for The Record’s weekend supplement. This covers politics, society, sports and culture. He tries to combine research and humour.

Winch graduated from McGill in 1980, then freelanced in Montreal and Toronto before working as a copy editor at The Gazette. From 1992 to 2018 he worked in the editorial service of the UN in New York, Geneva and Montreal.

In semi-retirement, he went on a “march through the classics”, reading novels by Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, Flaubert and Dickens. The best, he concludes, is Les Miserables.