 Hi, art lovers! | | |  | (CBC) | | | It might be the country’s biggest book club, so don’t be late for the first meeting of the season! Canada Reads kicks off tomorrow morning, and the first debate of the year goes live at 10:05 ET.
You can follow the action daily on CBC, and to make sure you don’t miss a single bon mot, CBC Books has created the ultimate guide to Canada Reads. Need broadcast info? They’ve got it. Curious about the contenders? These interviews and explainers will get you up to speed. Or maybe you’re searching for a community event near you, somewhere you can meet up with other fans? Check out these listings for talks and watch parties around the country.
Over on CBC Arts, we spent the last week hearing from the authors, who’ve contributed original essays on the subject of where they write. For Samantha M. Bailey, her special place is a custom-built sanctuary in her Toronto backyard. Emma Hooper writes by a lake, and Wayne Johnston prefers a windowless cubby he’s affectionately dubbed “the Bunker.” Jamie Chai Yun Liew is comfortable working just about anywhere, it seems. “I find myself writing where I am waiting, in between the places my family and I need to be,” she says. Ma-Nee Chacaby and Mary Plummer, co-authors of A Two-Spirit Journey, were on different continents when they wrote their book, and yet, they felt as if they were inhabiting the same “collaborative space.”
Canada Reads 2025 runs March 17-20. Bookmark this page for absolutely everything to do with the show. | | | | | Because we promised you eye candy ... | | | | |  | Artwork: Kent Monkman; Photo: TrépanierBaer Gallery | | Earlier this month, the Canada Council for the Arts announced the winners of the 2025 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Eight artists will receive $25,000 and a bronze medallion in honour of their “exceptional careers and remarkable contributions to visual arts, media arts and fine crafts.” They are Daina Augaitis, Thaddeus Holownia, Bruce LaBruce, Peter Pierobon, Clive Robertson, Sandra Rodriguez, Jin-me Yoon and Kent Monkman. A new piece by Kent is pictured here: Study for Watching Catlin Paint the Portrait of Ha-na-tá-nu-maúk. | | | | |  | Artwork: Sandra Meigs; Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid | | It came from Banff! The works appearing in Sandra Meigs’s Beings (now on view at Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto) came out of a two-week stay in the Alberta mountain town. | | | | |  | Artwork: Mitchell Wiebe; Photo: Ryan Josey/the Blue Building gallery | | Here’s a peek inside the Blue Building gallery in Halifax, where Mitchell Wiebe’s exhibition, Rarities & Remixes, is on through April 26. | | | | |  | Marcela Szwarc | | Painting by Marcela Szwarc: Friend of Winter, Friend of Spring. Marcela is a Polish American artist who splits their time between Montreal and New York. They’re influenced by Slavic culture and magical realism. | | | | |  | Scott Massey | | Out on the West Coast, the 2025 edition of the Capture Photography Festival officially kicks off April 1. Scott Massey and Annie Briard are among the artists (and newsletter readers — hello!) who are showing work as part of this year's events, and you can see their joint exhibition, A General Theory of Relative Ground, at Alliance Française Vancouver from April 3-27. In the show, Scott and Annie consider landscape photography and whether the “tainted genre” can still be relevant. Pictured above: a detail from Sea of Humanity, one of Scott’s new works. | | | | |  | Annie Briard | | And here’s a piece from Annie. It’s from her ongoing series, In Possible Lands. | | | | |  | Bridget Moser/CBC Creator Network | | | | | Bridget Moser’s Dreams of Dusk is a daytime drama inspired by Twin Peaks, crypto bros and problematic arts patrons. | | | | |  | Michael Tompkins | | | | | The Trades is a workplace comedy set in Nova Scotia. But according to series creator Ryan J. Lindsay, the show was actually inspired by the “Chemical Valley lifestyle” of southwestern Ontario. | | | | |  | Elevation PIctures | | | | | | | It’s a family-friendly horror-comedy based on a story idea from Clive Barker. | | |  | Sydnie Baynes | | CBC Books commissioned a round of trailers for Canada Reads, and they’ve been releasing those videos on Instagram. Sydnie created this short for Samantha M. Bailey’s thriller, Watch Out for Her. | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time! | | | | | |
