A Publishing Speakers鈥� Series 鈥撀燜all 2024
The English department is very excited to share Fall 2024’s line-up for A Publishing Speakers’ Series, which brought in acclaimed authors, editors, agents, publicists, and other industry professionals to discuss their career trajectories and the realities of mainstream traditional publishing.
We thank the University of 丁香园AV’s Research Office and the Writers’ Union of Canada for their generous support. The successful virtual speaking series is now in its third year, and it is hosted and curated by Lindsay Wong, Associate Professor of Creative Writing.
A Publishing Speakers' Series sessions:
Hollay Ghadery (award-winning author and publicist)
Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027.
Hollay is a co-host of Angela’s Bookclub on 105.5 FM, as well as HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at .
Zalika Reid-Benta (award winning author of Frying Plantain and River Mumma)
Zalika Reid-Benta's debut novel River Mumma was shortlisted for the 2024 Trillium Book Award and has received starred reviews from publications such as Publishers Weekly and Booklist Magazine. River Mumma is an Amazon Books Editors' Pick for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy and was the October 2023 pick for the CityLine book club. Reid-Benta's debut short story collection Frying Plantain won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction in 2020. Frying Plantain was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, the White Pine Award and the Evergreen Award. Her picture book, The Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas, will be published in 2025.
Kevin Chong (acclaimed author of seven books)
Kevin is the author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel The Double Life of Benson Yu, a finalist for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize and named a Best Book of Canadian Fiction by the CBC. His books have been named books of the year by Globe and Mail, National Post, and Amazon.ca, listed for a CBC prize, a BC Book Prize, and a National Magazine Award, optioned for film and TV, and published in the US, Europe, and Australia. His creative nonfiction and journalism have appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Rumpus, and the South China Morning Post.
Sonya Lalli/S.J Lalli (bestselling author of romance and thrillers)
Sonya Lalli is a romance and women’s fiction author of Punjabi and Bengali heritage. Her debut novel The Matchmaker’s List was a Target Diverse Book Club Pick, and Sonya’s books have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, NPR, The Washington Post, Glamour and more. She also writes psychological thrillers as S.C. Lalli. Sonya lives in Vancouver with her husband and their mini goldendoodle, Joey.
Did you know Sonya writes psychological thrillers as S.C. Lalli? Check out to find out more about her bestselling debut, Are You Sara?
Jessica Johns (Author of Bad Cree)
Jessica Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Her debut novel, Bad Cree, was shortlisted for the Amazon first novel award, was a Canada Reads finalist, and won the WGA Fiction Prize.
Meredith Pal (Assistant Editor at Penguin Canada)
Meredith Pal is an Assistant Editor at Penguin Canada. She oversees the paperbacks across Penguin’s imprints, and recently brought the timeless classic The Color Purple onto the list, making it more readily available to Canadian readers. Her interests include creative non-fiction and literary fiction, with a particular love for a stimulating sci-fi or speculative angle. She’s proud to have worked with Yasuko Thanh on her heartrending novel, To the Bridge, and to have brought Matthew R. Morris’s debut essay collection on race and belonging, Black Boys Like Me, to readers. Forthcoming publications she is looking forward to forward to include internationally bestselling author Kim Echlin’s Tell Others, a thought-provoking exploration of testimony in literature, and Charlotte Runcie’s debut novel, Bring the House Down, a vibrant critique of power dynamics and misogyny in theatre and the arts world.
Jamie Chai Yun Liew (acclaimed author of Dandelion
Jamie Chai Yun Liew is a writer, lawyer, professor and podcaster. Her debut novel Dandelion (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022) was longlisted for Canada Reads 2023 and won the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers' Award 2018. Her latest book Ghost Citizens: Decolonial Apparitions of Stateless, Foreign and Wayward Figures in Law (Fernwood Publishing, 2024) challenges popular, legal and academic assumptions of citizenship.
Anuja Varghese (award-winning author of Chrysalis
Anuja Varghese (she/her) is an award-winning writer and editor based in Hamilton, Ont. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines and anthologies, and she is the Fiction Editor at the Ex-Puritan. Her debut short story collection, titled Chrysalis, explores South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, queer, and speculative lens. In 2023, Chrysalis won the Writers Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and in 2024 was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Find Anuja on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok (@anuja_v across platforms) or through her website .