Canada Council for the Arts Reading Series
To mark its Centennial, the Marianopolis community welcomed neighbours from Westmount and across the city of Montreal to its free Canada Council for the Arts Reading Series. This year, audiences heard from:
- Raoul Bhaneja, the Canadian reader/performer/musician who has starred opposite Robert De Niro, among others, and in Atom Egoyan's Ararat. September 11, 2008.
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Trevor Ferguson, the former Westmount-based acclaimed novelist and playwright who has written under the penname John Farrow and been called Canada’s best novelist both in Books in Canada and the Toronto Star. November 6, 2008.
- Todd Babiak, the Edmontonian novelist, journalist and screenwriter whose second novel, The Garneau Block, was longlisted for the Giller Prize and who serves on the board of PEN Canada. March 17, 2009 .
Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, an audience of College and community members heard author Heather O’Neill speak on February 19, 2008.
2007-2008 Canada Council for the Arts Reading Series
The Canada Council for the Arts sponsored the following readings in the previous academic year:
- Rawi Hage read from his novel De Niro's Game. The book received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the largest and most international prize of its kind for a work of fiction published in English. De Niro's Game was also shortlisted for both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award. It won the Hugh MacLennan Prize as well as the McAuslan First Book Prize at the Quebec Writers' Federation literary awards. October 25, 2007.
- Neil Smith read the story Scrapbook from his collection of short stories Bang Crunch. The Globe and Mail chose Bang Crunch as a Best Book of 2007. The book also won the McAuslan First Book Prize and was nominated for the Hugh MacLennan Prize and a Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book. November 22, 2007.
- Heather O'Neill's debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Best Novel 2007. It was also shortlisted for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal as well as the Governor General’s Award for English language fiction in the 2007 Governor General’s Awards. February 19, 2008.
- Rachel Rose's first book of poetry Giving My Body to Science won the Quebec Writers’ Federation A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award, the Pat Lowther Award and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal. March 14, 2008.
