Please join us for an evening of rich literary conversation with acclaimed writers Junie Desil and Shane Book, two powerful voices in contemporary Black Canadian literature. 

Location: Online 

An In-Conversation Event with Junie Desil and Shane Book

Black History Month

Moderator: Junie Desil, author of Allostatic Load (Talonbooks),

Author: Shane Book,  All Black Everything (McClelland & Stewart) 

Desil and Book will reflect on their writing practices, the intersections of art and activism, and what it means to tell Black stories in the current moment. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A, inviting audience members into dialogue with the authors.

This event is an opportunity to listen, learn, and engage with two writers whose work challenges, moves, and expands our understanding of Black life and literary expression.

About The Moderator

Junie Désil is of Haitian ancestry, born of immigrant parents on the traditional territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka on the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), and raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Junie has performed at various literary events and festivals. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, The Capilano Review and CV2. A UBC alumnus, a participant in Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio, and current Uvic MFA student, Junie’s debut book of poetry eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talon Books, 2020) was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection allostatic load (Talon Books) came out April, 2025. Junie mentors poets at SFU's Writers' Studio and also teaches in SFU's Leadership Essentials Certificate program.

About The Author

Shane Book is a poet, filmmaker and professor in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria. He was educated at Western University, the University of Victoria, New York University, Temple University, The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing. His first collection, Ceiling of Sticks, was a Poetry Society of America Selection and won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His second volume, Congotronic, won the Archibald Lampman Award and was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Award, Ottawa Book Award, and Griffin Poetry Prize. His award-winning films have screened at more than fifty film festivals around the world and on television. He has been Writer-in-Residence at Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Virginia, Saint Mary’s College of California and the University of Calgary. And he has taught at a number of institutions, including New York University, Temple University, the University of California, Berkeley, Western Kentucky University, and Stanford. In 2024, he was Visiting Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The American edition of his new poetry collection, All Black Everything, was recently published by University of Iowa Press.