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The final podcast of our 6-Part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth’s decreasing habitability. Jenalee Kluttz, Ph.D. An educator-activist and community organizer, Jenalee is passionate about climate and ecological justice. She brings this passion into her work at the University of British Columbia where she researches social movements for climate and environmental justice, the learning that takes place in and through social action, as well as education for sustainability more broadly. At the center of her work is the recognition that she lives as a settler on lands that are the traditional, unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, and thus much of her research and writing focuses on decolonizing climate action.

Part 5 of our 6- part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth’s decreasing habitability. Dr. Michelle Lam is the Director of the Centre for Aboriginal and Rural Education Studies (CARES), an applied research institute in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University. Prior to entering academia, she was an English as an Additional Language teacher in Canada and abroad. She is interested in newcomer settlement, education for anti-racism, and rural equity.

Part 4 of our 6-Part series; Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth’s decreasing habitability. Dr. Candy Jones is currently an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at Brandon University. Her research interests include rural education and capacity building, teacher professional development (particularly in rural contexts), mathematics education, and teacher identity. A career-long teacher and scholar in the field of rural education, Dr. Jones spent 20 years as secondary educator in three different rural Manitoba communities before moving to Brandon University in 2015. She is both passionate about the strength and beauty of rural spaces, and a staunch advocate for those who live and work within them.

Part 3 of our 6-Part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth’s decreasing habitability. Maria Vamvalis is currently a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum and Pedagogy program in the department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her research focuses on climate justice education that nurtures meaning, purpose and hope in learners. She has been an educator in the public school system in Ontario and has worked for many years as a facilitator of teacher professional learning and as a curriculum consultant. She has participated in diverse educational projects and has been deeply committed to reflexive practices within education. She is currently an instructor in the Master of Teaching program at OISE, University of Toronto.

Part 2 of our 6-Part series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth’s decreasing habitability. Dr. Alysha Farrell is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University. She is passionate about fostering a caring ecology in the study of education. Her research focuses on teaching, leading, and learning in the face of the climate crisis. Using arts-based methods like playwriting, forum theatre, narrative photography, and poetic inquiry, she collaborates with others to tell stories that will stick to your bones. Her recent research-art exhibition at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba was called Before I Go to Bed Tonight. The exhibition featured the work of 17 young artists who delved into the personal and collective impacts of climate change. Alysha is the author of two books, Exploring the Affective Dimensions of Educational Leadership (2020) and Ecosophy and Educational Research for the Anthropocene (2022). She co-edited a third book called, Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the Face of Environmental Crisis that was released in July 2022. She has presented at several national and international conferences on topics such as using arts-based approaches to better understand the emotional dimensions of climate change education and eco-orientations to pedagogy.

Part 1 of our 6-Part Series on Teaching in the Anthropocene. Hosted by Neil Wilson. This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth’s decreasing habitability. Stan Wilson has a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is an Elder of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. Stan has experience teaching at all levels of education including primary, elementary, and high school both in the public system and at the First Nation’s level. He has been a school board member, a member of the Board of Regents for the University of Winnipeg, a school principal, superintendent of education, consultant to provincial Departments of Education in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and a dean of Education for the University College of the North. Stan is a co-founder of the First Nations Graduate Education Program at the University of Alberta and is now working with a team of international Indigenous scholars to develop an international doctoral program.

Steven W, Beattie sits down with renowned author and journalist John Lorinc to discuss his Balsillie Prize-winning book Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias. Is the ‘smart city’ the utopia we’ve been waiting for? The promise of the so-called smart city has been at the forefront of urban planning and development since the early 2010s, and the tech industry that supplies smart city software and hardware is now worth hundreds of billions a year. But the ideas and approaches underpinning smart city tech raise tough and important questions about the future of urban communities, surveillance, automation, and public participation. The smart city era, moreover, belongs firmly in a longer historical narrative about cities ? one defined by utopian ideologies, architectural visions, and technological fantasies. Smart streetlights, water and air quality tracking, autonomous vehicles: with examples from all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Portland, and Chicago, Dream States unpacks the world of smart city tech, but also situates this important shift in city-building into a broader story about why we still dream about perfect places. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

Join us for a conversation between poet and editor Ellen Chang-Richardson and writer and visual artist Manahil Bandukwala about her poetry collection, MONUMENT . MONUMENT is a conversation with Mughal Empress Mumtaz Mahal, which moves her legacy beyond the Taj Mahal. MONUMENT upturns notions of love, monumentalisation, and empire by exploring buried facets of Mumtaz Mahal's story. The collection layers linear time and geographical space to chart the continuing presence of historical legacies. It considers what alternate futures could have been possible. Who are we when we continue to make the same mistakes? Beyond distance, time, and boundaries, what do we still carry? The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

CBC’s Laurence Wall leads the conversation with Canada’s top war historian, Tim Cook, about his latest publication, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers: Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War . Lifesavers and Body Snatchers is a definitive medical history of the Great War, illuminating how the carnage of modern battle gave birth to revolutionary life-saving innovations. It brings to light shocking revelations of the ways the brutality of combat and the necessity of agonizing battlefield decisions led to unimaginable strain for men and women of medicine who fought to save the lives of soldiers. Medical care in almost all armies during the Great War, and especially in the Canadian medical services, was sophisticated and constantly evolving. Vastly more wounded soldiers were saved than lost. Doctors and surgeons prevented disease from decimating armies, confronted ghastly wounds from chemical weap-ons, remade shattered bodies, and struggled to ease soldiers’ battle-haunted minds. After the war, the hard lessons learned by doctors and nurses were brought back to Canada. A new Department of Health created guidelines in the aftermath of the 1918–1919 influ-enza pandemic, which had killed 55,000 Canadians and millions around the world. In a grim irony, the fight to improve civilian health was furthered by the most destructive war up to that point in human history. But medical advances were not the only thing brought back from Europe: Lifesavers and Body Snatchers exposes the disturbing story of the harvesting of human body parts in medical units behind the lines. Tim Cook has spent over a decade investigating the history of Canadian medical doctors removing the body parts of slain soldiers and transporting their brains, lungs, bones, and other organs to the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in London, England. This uncovered history has never been told before and is part of the hidden legacy of the medical war. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

CKCU’s Susan Johnston sits down with Ottawa’s Michelle Sinclair about her acclaimed debut novel, Almost Visible . Exploring cultural and personal memory, it reflects on what can happen when a lonely person intervenes in another person's life. Tess has just moved to Montreal from Nova Scotia, and seeks to lose herself by involving herself in the lives of others. She befriends an older man while delivering meals to the elderly. Her interest in his past veers into obsession after furtively going through his photos and letters and "borrowing" his journal. Though fact and fiction are blurred, they reveal a man shaken by political polarization and repression in his Latin-American homeland. Tess learns about a young, passionate man in the 1970s forced to reconcile his love for a militant young woman and his dedication to his best friend whose family is on the other side of the political divide. As she delves deeper into Mr. the man’s story, she questions her own life choices, emotions and obsessions. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

Steven W. Beattie interviews Elyse Friedman, acclaimed author, screenwriter, poet and playwright. Her latest novel, The Opportunist is a sly, compulsively readable tale about greed, power and the world’s most devious family. When Alana Shropshire’s seventy-six-year-old father, Ed, starts dating Kelly, a saucy twenty-eight-year-old, a flurry of messages arrive from Alana’s brothers, urging her to help “protect Dad” from the young interloper. Alana knows that what Teddy and Martin really want to protect is their father’s fortune, and she tells them she couldn’t care less about the May–December romance. Long estranged from her privileged family, Alana has no stake in the game, and as a hardworking single mom, she has more important things to worry about. But when Ed and Kelly’s wedding is announced, Teddy and Martin kick into hyperdrive, and eventually persuade Alana to fly to their father’s 900-acre West Coast island retreat to perform one small task in their plan to lure the “gold digger” away from their father. Kelly, however, proves a lot wilier than expected, and Alana becomes entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of secrets and surprises. Will she be able to escape her brothers’ elaborate web of deceit? Just how far will her siblings go to retain control? The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

The Festival’s Neil Wilson sits down with Geoff Dembicki, an investigative climate change reporter to discuss his acclaimed book, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change, published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute. Burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming: this is what top American oil executives were told by scientists in 1959. But they ignored that warning. Instead, they developed one of the biggest, most polluting oil sources in the world—the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. In The Petroleum Papers, Dembicki draws from confidential oil industry documents to uncover for the first time how companies like Exxon, Koch Industries, and Shell built a global right-wing echo chamber to protect oil sands profits—a misinformation campaign that continues to this day. He also tells the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: a Seattle lawyer who brought down Big Tobacco and is now going after Big Oil, a Filipina activist whose family drowned in a climate disaster, and a former Exxon engineer pushed out for asking hard questions. With experts now warning we have less than a decade to get global emissions under control, The Petroleum Papers provides a step-by-step account of how we got to this precipice—and the politicians and companies who deserve our blame. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 DONATIONS: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

Steven W. Beattie hosts a conversation with consummate storyteller and bestselling novelist Wayne Johnston. His latest, Jennie's Boy, reaches back into his past to bring us a sad, tender and at times extremely funny memoir of his Newfoundland boyhood. "Wayne Johnston’s childhood in Newfoundland was full of laughter, pain and poverty. And then laughter again. His memoir, Jennie’s Boy, is an uplifting account of a childhood not just survived—he came close to death too many times to count—but triumphed over. Thank god he lived to tell the tale." — Rick Mercer For six months between 1966 and 1967, Wayne Johnston and his family lived in a wreck of a house across from his grandparents in Goulds, Newfoundland. At seven, Wayne was sickly and skinny, unable to keep food down, plagued with insomnia and a relentless cough that no doctor could diagnose, though they had already removed his tonsils, adenoids and appendix. To the neigh­bours, he was known as “Jennie’s boy,” a back­handed salute to his tiny, ferocious mother, who felt judged for Wayne’s condition at the same time as worried he might never grow up. Jennie’s Boy is Wayne’s tribute to a family and a community that were simultaneously fiercely protective of him and fed up with having to make allowances for him. His boyhood was full of pain, yes, but also tenderness and Newfoundland wit. By that wit, and through love—often expressed in the most unloving ways—Wayne survived. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives.

Peter Schneider speaks with author, journalist and publisher Michael Hingston about his remarkable book, Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda. It tells, for the first time, the complete history of Redonda’s transformation from an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 MAKE A DONATION: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

We present the the third and final of our special episodes hosted by York University’s Zulfikar Hirji and presented in collaboration with Carleton University’s Beyond Resettlement Conference. (https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/beyond-resettlement/) Born in Uganda, Tina Athaide immigrated with her family to Canada from England and has been a teacher for thirty years. Her debut novel, Orange for the Sunsets. The Middle Grade book is a Junior Library Guild Selection and winner of the CCBC Geoffrey Bilson award for historical fiction for young readers. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. Subscribe: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 Donations: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

We present the second of three special episodes hosted by York University’s Zulfikar Hirji and presented in collaboration with Carleton University’s Beyond Resettlement Conference. (https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/beyond-resettlement/) Tasneem Jamal was born in Mbarara, Uganda, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. The author of the novel Where the Air Is Sweet, she serves as a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly and is at work on her second novel. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. Subscribe: https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 Donation: https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

We present the first of three special episodes hosted by York University’s Zulfikar Hirji and presented in collaboration with Carleton University’s Beyond Resettlement Conference. (https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/beyond-resettlement/) Hafsa Zayyan is half-Nigerian, half-Pakistani and was born and raised (mostly) in the UK. She is a dispute resolution lawyer working in the City of London and is also the author of We Are All Birds of Uganda, the winner of MerkyBooks’ inaugural New Writer’s Prize and short-listed for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&id=d2443cdbd3 https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

This conversation between CBC's Amanda Pfeffer and Dr. Gabor Maté was recorded at a live event on October 1, 2022. The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. Gabor Maté’s internationally bestselling books have changed the way we look at addiction and have been integral in shifting the conversations around ADHD, stress, disease, embodied trauma, and parenting. Now, in this revolutionary book, he eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their health care systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. In The Myth of Normal, co-written with his son Daniel, Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society, and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives.

Poet Ellen Chang-Richardson reunites with David Ly for a conversation on his second collection Dream of Me as Water, which explores ways of being that are not beholden to the expectations of others. Using water as his central metaphor, Ly meditates on how identity is never a stagnant concept, but instead something that is intangible, fluid, and ever-evolving. Dream of Me as Water revels in the nuances of the self, flouting outside perceptions for deeper, more personal realities.

Kate Heartfield sits down with acclaimed bestseller Emma Donoghue to discuss her latest move, Haven. Around the year 600, three men vow to leave the world behind and set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them. In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar priest named Artt has a dream in which God tells him to leave the sinful world behind. With two monks—young Trian and old Cormac—he rows down the River Shannon in search of an isolated spot in which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find the impossibly steep, bare island known today as Skellig Michael. In such a place, what will survival mean? Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives.