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Join us to welcome award-winning Canadian authors Vivek Shreya and Téa Mutonji as they discuss their newest releases, The Hystericals by Vivek Shraya and My Person by Téa Mutonji. Books will be available for purchase and a signing will follow the event.
Presented in partnership with Words Worth Books.
From the bestselling author of I’m Afraid of Men comes a propulsive and chilling novel for the post-#MeToo era, set in an isolationist state where one woman’s death sparks a movement that could liberate women or destroy them all.
When Sarah Munroe is sexually assaulted on her university campus and her attacker walks free, she makes a devastating choice: she publicly takes her own life in a final act of defiance against a regime that has stripped women of their rights.
Her final message ignites a radical movement called #FreeToo. Soon, masses of women are taking up “Sarah’s Call” and “freeing” themselves as extreme acts of protest. As these deaths multiply across the state, the government declares the movement a contagion. Overnight, all women are reclassified as “hystericals.”
Forced into a new reality where her very existence is criminalized, Sarah’s sister, Kennedy, struggles with her own grief, guilt, and anger. And as the regime tightens its grip, she will have to reckon with her sister’s legacy—and decide whether to surrender or survive.
Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, TV, film, and fashion. A three-time Canadian Screen Award winner, Vivek is the creator and writer of the CBC Gem Original Series How to Fail as a Popstar, which had its international premiere at Cannes. She was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize and has collaborated with musical icons Jann Arden, Peaches, and Jully Black. Her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men was heralded by Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel.” Vivek has been a brand ambassador for MAC Cosmetics and Pantene, a guest host on The Social and CBC’s q, and she is a director on the board of the Tegan and Sara Foundation.
Intimate and sharply funny, My Person is a bold debut novel following two lifelong friends who suddenly find themselves in an emotional deadlock when one abruptly proposes to break up after years of subtle betrayals, from Téa Mutonji, author of Shut Up You're Pretty and one of Canada’s most exciting writers.
Best friends of over twenty years, Tania and Margot are preparing to host their monthly Sunday Loaf dinner party, when Tania tells Margot this isn’t working for her anymore—they’ve been entangled for too long and she wants to "unknow" her. But how do you extricate yourself from someone whose family owns the apartment you live in, who has taken you in as their own, even claims you as their "person”?
As Tania attempts to live her life loudly on the outskirts of Margot’s bubble, Margot’s past betrayals become increasingly clear. But she means well, doesn’t she? They’d felt like sisters from the start. Or had Tania just been blind to Margot’s antics?
Set in the framework of a tense will-they-won’t-they break-up, Tania and Margot get entangled in a rigorous revision of history, their once delicate dance intensifying toward a frantic finale and forcing them to reckon with where it all went wrong . . . or whether they were simply wrong for each other to begin with.
A taut, piercing exploration of race and privilege, codependency and the ways in which world-defining friendships can be both beautifully and excruciatingly life-altering, My Person is an addicting, astutely observed novel from a major talent.
Téa Mutonji is a poet and fiction writer. Her debut collection of short stories, Shut Up You’re Pretty was a finalist for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (2019) and Canada Reads (2024). It won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award (2020) and the Trillium Book Award (2020). Mutonji was a recipient of the Writers' Trust Rising Stars award (2022) and received the Jill Davis Fellowship (2021) at New York University where she completed her MFA in fiction.
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Located at the RIM Park Manulife Sportsplex, the Eastside Branch boasts specialized creative spaces, quiet study areas, a nature education space and lots of natural light.
