Book Signing with Miss Rocket

Join Miss Rocket for a meet and greet and book signing from Try and Thrive!

From the author:

“Hello,

I’m Miss Rocket, the founder and CEO of Languissimo, and the voice behind the Try and Thrive movement, a powerful call to action for youth, single parents, and anyone ready to claim their independence and self-worth.

I’m a communication and financial education coach, entrepreneur, and single mother.

In my newest book, Try and Thrive, I share a raw and uplifting story of perseverance, from overcoming setbacks in education and sports, to building a business from the ground up, to breaking free from emotional abuse and reclaiming my voice.

My message is simple: “Give yourself a try and believe you’re worth thriving.”

I’m also the author of Voulez-vous parler français avec moi? and Would you like to speak English with me?, practical guides to help people speak French and English as second languages.

I like things simple, efficient, fun, and practical.

When I’m not writing, coaching, organizing events for the community, or leading workshops, I enjoy recharging in nature, exploring the world, or savoring quality time with my son.”

Ottawa Book Launch for Laurie D. Graham, Liz Johnston, and Aga Maksimowska

Join Laurie D. Graham, Liz Johnston and Aga Maksimowska at Anina's Café in Ottawa as they launch their newest books.

Books will be sold by Perfect Books.

Food will be sold by Anina's Café.

Register HERE

LAURIE D. GRAHAM grew up in Treaty 6 Territory, near amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), and she has lived in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, in the Territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg, since 2018, where she is a poet, an editor, and the publisher of Brick magazine, a journal of literary non-fiction based in Toronto. Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of poetry in Canada. Her second and third books, Settler Education and Fast Commute, were both nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Calling It Back to Me is Laurie's fourth collection.

LIZ JOHNSTON grew up in Revelstoke, B.C., and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review, Grain, The Antigonish Review, and The Cardiff Review. Johnston is an editor of Brick, A Literary Journal. The Fall-Down Effect is her debut novel.

AGA MAKSIMOWSKA is a writer whose debut novel Giant, about premature sexual development and the fall of Communism in Poland, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her stories and essays have been published in Brick, The New Quarterly, The Humber Literary Review, White Wall Review, The Globe and Mail, Today’s Parent, and longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. Becalming is her second novel. She lives in Toronto.

Amal El-Mohtar Book Launch, presented by Perfect Books and The Other Hill

Join us for the Ottawa launch of Hugo Award-winning, New York Times Bestseller, local favorite, AND former Perfect Books bookseller Amal El-Mohtar’s latest book, Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories.

April 20th, 2026

Doors 7:00pm, Event 7:30-8:30pm

allsaints event space, 317 Chapel St, Ottawa

General Tickets: $15, Early bird tickets: $10 (Available March 18 until midnight on March 22)

Buy your tickets here

This event is presented in partnership between Perfect Books and The Other Hill. Books will be available for purchase by Perfect Books, with a book signing by Amal El-Mohtar after the reading and discussion.

About the book:

Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar. With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose. 

"An essential collection of work from one of today’s most poignant speculative writers. El-Mohtar creates immersive worlds with beautiful language." —Library Journal, starred review

About the Author:

AMAL EL-MOHTAR is a Hugo Award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, poetry and criticism. Her books include The River Has Roots and the New York Times bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War, written with Max Gladstone, which has been translated into over ten languages. Her reviews and articles have appeared in the New York Times and on NPR Books. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.

allsaints event space is a wheelchair accessible venue with wheelchair accessible washrooms. Accessible parking is available next to the accessible entrance, in the lot beside the venue on Chapel street. There will be signs from outside directing those who require it towards the accessible entrance with an elevator. The event is on the third floor.

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Whit Fraser

Join Ottawa Writers Festival for the launch of From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall, a sweeping memoir from veteran journalist and northern chronicler Whit Fraser, hosted by author Elizabeth Hay.

Presented in partnership with Library and Archives Canada. With book sales by Perfect Books.

Reserve your free ticket to this limited seating event here

Veteran journalist Whit Fraser recounts the stories behind the stories in this collection of tales drawn from fifty years of reporting on nation-changing events.

From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall traces a lifetime spent at the front lines of the events that shaped modern Canada. From his youth in Nova Scotia to decades reporting across the Arctic, Fraser offers a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of major national turning points—stories he reported on up close, but never fully had the chance to tell until now.

Fraser brings readers into the cold, stunned morning when the Soviet satellite Cosmos 954 rained nuclear debris across the Northwest Territories, igniting one of the most secretive international military operations in Canadian history. He revisits the tragedy of the Ocean Ranger, one of the world’s most advanced oil rigs that became the site of an unthinkable disaster. On Parliament Hill, he reports from inside the storm of the National Energy Program and the tense constitutional negotiations that affirmed Indigenous rights while dividing the nation anew.

Woven throughout is Fraser’s personal journey—his years living in the North, his friendships with leaders who transformed the political landscape, and his partnership with Mary Simon, whose swearing-in as Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General brings his story full circle.

Eliza Reid, The First Lady Next Door Canadian Tour

Join us for the launch of The First Lady Next Door by Eliza Reid, presented in collaboration between Library and Archives Canada and Simon & Schuster. With book sales by Perfect Books.

Register here!

An inspiring memoir by the Canadian-born former First Lady of Iceland that asks the question: What if the life you didn't plan is the one where you find your voice?

In early 2016, Canadian-born Eliza Reid’s biggest daily goals were modest but meaningful: showering without one of her four kids bursting into the bathroom, juggling clients without dropping a deadline, and growing the writers’ retreat she was building from scratch. What wasn’t on her bingo card? That her husband—a bookish, cardigan-wearing history professor—would run for president of Iceland. . . and seven weeks later, actually win.

Suddenly, Eliza was catapulted into a new life as First Lady of her adopted country, with the eyes of a nation watching her every move—as someone’s wife. Absent an instruction manual (she googled how to curtsy before meeting the Queen of Denmark), she decided to do what she’d always done: figure it out on her own terms.

Part fish out of water and part fairy tale, The First Lady Next Door takes you from rural Ontario to Timbuktu, to the White House and Buckingham Palace. Eliza shows how embracing authenticity in all its messiness can become your greatest strength, even when the world expects polished perfection. After all, our everyday moments are what create the roadmap for making the unexpected count.

ELIZA REID is a bestselling writer, public speaker, gender equality advocate, and cofounder of the acclaimed Iceland Writers Retreat. She was born and raised in Canada but has lived in Iceland for over twenty years. Her first book, Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland’s Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World, was an instant bestseller in Canada and Iceland, and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her debut mystery, Death on the Island, was an instant national bestseller in Canada, Iceland, and the United States, is the first of a series, and has been optioned for television. From 2016 to 2024, Eliza served in the unofficial role of First Lady while her husband was President of Iceland. She lives in the outskirts of Reykjavík with her husband and four children.

Canadian Indie Bookstore Day!

It is the best day of the year!! Indie Bookstore Day! We will see you in the store for donut holes and other treats (yum!), free giveaways (ooh!), and prize draws (to be revealed!!). We love you and we love books. Let's have a great Indie Bookstore Day 2026! Shop Indie Forever!

Ottawa Writers Festival presents Suzanne Simard

Join us for an unforgettable evening with Suzanne Simard, the trailblazing scientist who pioneered the once-radical—and now broadly accepted—concept of sophisticated communication between trees. 

Her new book, When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World , blends rigorous science and neglected Indigenous wisdom in service of a powerful vision for the future of our forests.

With her bestselling book Finding the Mother Tree, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard advanced a revelatory new paradigm for the profound intelligence of trees and their relationships with each other. Now, with When the Forest Breathes, she examines the forces that threaten forest ecosystems and, with years of research at her back, offers a pragmatic and hopeful vision for a responsible relationship with the forests that sustain us.

Raised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, Simard has watched timber companies ignore the complexity of nature’s self-regulation and Indigenous communities’ finely honed knowledge of the natural world. Plundering the forests for profit, they leave in their wake heightened risk of wildfire, drought, water crises, and endangerment of plant and animal life.

But Simard’s research, which recognizes forests as complex, adaptive systems, has the potential to reverse this pattern. Here, in accessible and impassioned prose, she shares the findings of one of the most ambitious climate research projects ever conceived. In her native British Columbia, Simard and her colleagues study innovative logging patterns that reflect an array of attempts at conservation, plant a mixture of tree species to identify the combinations most resilient to the stresses wrought by climate change, and introduce trees from other climates to increase the adaptivity of the forest. Simard also opens our eyes to the sophisticated knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples, who have stewarded the forests and waters for centuries. Their wisdom offers a valuable bridge from the past, a set of principles grounded in respect for the land.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here

Book Launch for Knowledge Under Siege

We hope you’ll join Shannon Dea, Joel Westheimer, Robin Whitaker, James McNinch, and Marc Spooner for this crucial conversation.

Register for this free event here!

At a time when universities are being defunded by governments and vilified by ultra-conservative pundits, defining their value has never been more urgent.

For decades, efforts to quantify the value of universities in dollars and cents led to the corporatization of institutions that are meant to serve their students and society by creating knowledge and teaching—not by turning a profit. Now more than ever, the role of the university in advancing discovery, democracy, equity, and in contributing to its students’ success is under siege and needs to be defended.

Knowledge Under Siege picks up where Spooner and McNinch’s Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education left off and analyzes today’s volatile higher education landscape—one where hostility towards the academy is a growing trend across the globe. Bringing together leading international voices, including Gloria Ladson-Billings, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Christopher Newfield, Kevin Kumashiro, and many others, the book considers how universities are facing unprecedented threats that include defunding, criticism of and the dismantling of initiatives to diversify the academy, academic gag orders, and efforts to undermine tenure and academic freedom. It asks how institutions can resist these incursions while working towards becoming engines of social mobility for a diverse student body (not merely serving the most privileged) and graduating critical thinkers who aspire to build a better world.

There is a consensus in higher education that universities must remain autonomous so that our societies can better understand both our history and our rapidly changing world. Knowledge Under Siege is a call to action to fight for our institutions and make them self-reflexive spaces where truth and learning continue to thrive.

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Zoe Dickinson, Frances Boyle, and Margo LaPierre

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Zoe Dickinson, Frances Boyle, and Margo LaPierre. Notably, let’s celebrate Zoe Dickinson’s brand-new, debut collection of poetry, Staff Picks for Invertebrates!

Originally from Aylmer, Quebec, ZOE DICKINSON lives on the unceded lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on Vancouver Island. She is a manager at Russell Books, and Artistic Director emerita of the Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series. Zoe has published two award-winning chapbooks: Public Transit and intertidal: poems from the littoral zone. She is co-editor with Kyeren Regehr of the anthology After: Poems in Dialogue, forthcoming from Caitlin Press. Staff Picks for Invertebrates is her first full-length collection of poetry.

FRANCES BOYLE is the author of an award-winning short story collection, a novella, and three books of poetry, most recently Openwork and Limestone. Her debut novel, Skin Hunger, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in fall 2026. Originally from the prairies, Frances has long been settled in Ottawa. She currently helps run VerseFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival, and is Vice-President of the League of Canadian Poets. Her poems and short fiction are widely published in literary magazines throughout North America and internationally.

MARGO LAPIERRE is a freelance book editor and poet. Her second poetry collection, Ajar, was published by Guernica Editions. She serves on Arc Poetry Magazine’s editorial board and is a member of the Ottawa-based poetry collective VII. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and a publishing certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. She has won national awards for her editing, fiction, and poetry and seeks to destigmatize bipolar disorder and psychosis.

Book Launch for Misha Solomon's My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet

We hope you’ll join us in celebration of Misha Solomon’s wonderful debut poetry collection with Brick Books, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet. He will be joined by local authors Manahil Bandukwala, Ben Ladouceur, and rob mclennan.

Two timelines intersect, weaving an alternate reality of queer ancestors, half-truths, domesticity, and desire in spite of past and present persecution.

What if the queer ancestor you always wondered about had really existed—and could speak to you across all time? When there’s only one document to be found in the archive, can our misheard or half-remembered family stories be enough? My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet is a daring, erotic, and humorous exploration of queer longing and Jewish possibility at the turn of two centuries. In a captivating series of narrative poems, Misha Solomon entwines an alternate memoir of his great-grandfather in pre-Holocaust Romania with a contemporary gay life in Montreal. With profound vision, voice, and craft, Solomon sets a new and powerful precedent for speculative poetic histories, allowing intimacy to find a way through memories real, imagined, and desired.

MISHA SOLOMON is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. He is the author of two chapbooks, Full Sentences (Turret House Press, 2022) and FLORALS (above/ground press, 2020), and his work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Arc, The Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Riddle Fence, and & Change. He completed an MA at Concordia University and a BA at Columbia University in New York City. My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet is his debut full-length collection.

Mike Martin Double Book Launch

Join Mike Martin for the launch of TWO books: A Change in Plans (A Sgt. Wildflower Mystery) and My Ode to Newfoundland (A Poetry Collection). Featuring music by Victoria Vlad.

Mike Martin was born in St. John’s, NL on the east coast of Canada and now lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a long-time freelance writer and his articles and essays have appeared in newspapers, magazines and online across Canada as well as in the United States and New Zealand.

He is the author of the award-winning Sgt. Windflower Mystery series set in beautiful Grand Bank. There are now 12 books in this light mystery series with the publication of Dangerous Waters. A Tangled Web was shortlisted in 2017 for the best light mystery of the year, and Darkest Before the Dawn won the 2019 Bony Blithe Light Mystery Award. Mike has also published Christmas in Newfoundland: Memories and Mysteries, a Sgt. Windflower Book of Christmas past and present.

Book Signing with Sonia Saikaley

Celebrate Mother’s Day with this lovely anthology, Mum's the Word, by Guernia Editions all about mothers, with contributor Sonia Saikaley! She will be in store chatting about her story in the book and signing books from 1-3pm.

About the anthology:

Everyone has a mother. What if that mother was wonderful? Good. What if that mother was not the mother shown on sweet Mother’s Day cards, featured in ads, shown in Hallmark movies? What if a collection about mothers included more than just tributes? What if the collection was honest, inclusive, and thought-provoking? The editors set out to gather these kinds of stories from published authors who were willing to share their experiences. The result was Mum’s the Word, thirteen tales dealing with everything from missing mothers to regretful mothers to embarrassing mothers to redefined mothers.

SONIA SAIKALEY was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada to a big Lebanese family. The daughter of a shopkeeper, she had access to all the treats she wanted. Her first book, The Lebanese Dishwasher, co-won the 2012 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. She has two poetry collections Turkish Delight, Montreal Winter and A Samurai’s Pink House. Her novel The Allspice Bath was the 2020 IPPY Gold Medal winner and the 2020 International Book Awards winner for Multicultural Fiction and a finalist in the 2020 Ottawa Book Awards. Her first children’s picture book Samantha’s Sandwich Stand was published by Renaissance Press in 2021. She is a graduate of the University of Ottawa and the Humber School for Writers. Many years ago she belly-danced her way across Northern Japan and taught English there, too. 

An Evening with Fran Lebowitz

The National Arts Centre presents Fran Lebowitz at Southam Hall

In a cultural landscape filled with endless pundits and talking heads, Fran Lebowitz stands out as one of our most insightful social commentators. 

Her essays and interviews offer her acerbic views on current events and the media – as well as pet peeves including tourists, baggage-claim areas, after-shave lotion, adults who roller skate, or anyone who is unduly tan. The New York Times Book Review calls Lebowitz an "important humorist in the classic tradition." Purveyor of urban cool, Lebowitz is a cultural satirist whom many call the heir to Dorothy Parker.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

More details and tickets here!

Susannah M. Smith launches the Alchemy of Paradise

We can’t wait to welcome Susannah M. Smith to launch her next incredible literary novel from Invisible Publishing, The Alchemy of Paradise. Join us!

The Alchemy of Paradise is a fictional memoir and novel of ideas that continues the story of the curator-narrator from The Fairy Tale Museum as she confronts grief, loss, and mortality through the intertwined practices of collecting and alchemy. In the magpie style of Walter Benjamin and the quiet, archival wandering of Moyra Davey, its curator-narrator gathers objects, impressions, and fragments - not only to preserve them but as an ongoing ritual of engaging with grief, to shape an order that makes survival possible.

When order can no longer provide solace, she turns to the alchemical, where matter shifts into metaphor and loss becomes transformation. In this interplay between collecting and transmuting, order and disorder, the text discovers a tonic for survival: a way of living with what cannot be controlled or fully understood. Death is reframed not as an end, but as a transmutation - a passage into new constellations of meaning.

Set in contemporary England with Venice at its core, The Alchemy of Paradise unfolds as an ontological inquiry and metaphysical bildungsroman. Its form is hybrid and aphoristic, recalling the interdisciplinary works of W.G. Sebald, Kate Zambreno, and Moyra Davey.

Resisting despair, The Alchemy of Paradise meditates on the ways that art and imagination can act as portals, allowing us to chart personal maps through the universal yet individual territories of loss. Generative and layered, it is a contemplative work that offers curation itself as an ongoing practice for navigating meaning, creativity, and renewal.

[Best read after dreaming.]

Susannah M. Smith is the author of The Fairy Tale Museum (Invisible Publishing) and How the Blessed Live (Coach House Books). Her short fiction, poetry, and visual art have appeared in various publications. She lives in Vancouver.

Festival Book Club with Carly Watters, Kerry Clare, and Mai Nguyen

Ottawa Writers Festival presents the Festival Book Club!

Podcaster Carly Watters, a literary agent, representing award-winners and bestsellers in a variety of categories, will spill the tea on what she thinks makes for a great read as she and Mary Taggart, author and founder of #marysmustread book club discuss what makes a good book club pick. They’ll also share their top book club recommendations.

Then, Mary takes the stage for a conversation with two of the country’s hottest authors, Mai Nguyen and Kerry Clare, to get a taste of their newly released books and find out how they bring a story to life.

Mai Nguyen ’s Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead is a darkly humorous yet uplifting novel about a grieving mother who starts working at a funeral home and discovers that the best way to honor the dead is to live. All Cleo has ever wanted was to be a mother. The day she discovers she’s pregnant is the happiest of her life, but something goes very, very wrong. Now a grieving Cleo must navigate life after losing her baby. Forced to quit her demanding job as an actuary, Cleo manages to find a job at a funeral home where she meets a revolving door of bereaved locals and discovers the power of confronting grief.

A novel about friendship, community, and church jumble sales,  Definitely Thriving  by Kerry Clare , is a celebration of people who are perfectly imperfect, and all the love and support that’s required for one woman to make it on her own. After accidentally-on-purpose exploding her listless marriage, Clemence returns to her hometown resolved to build a life for herself. It’s supposed to be Eat, Pray, Love, without the love part. But no woman is an island, and soon Clemence finds herself embroiled in neighbourhood drama.

This special event will not be live-streamed. Tickets include welcome beverage and nibbles. Cash bar available.

Book sales by Perfect Books.

The Chip Stand Book Signing

Join Joel Kimmel and Chantal Bennett for a book signing for their book, The Chip Stand!

The humble chip stand is an iconic symbol of Canada and a welcome sight to hungry tourists and locals alike.

Eating at a chip stand is an unpretentious experience. No white tablecloths or extensive menus here. The chip stand is where down-to-earth, real Canadians go to indulge. It's the quintessential Canadian road trip food. From coast to coast, these colorful shacks, sheds, buses, vans and trucks dish out delicious French fries, poutine, hamburgers and steaming hot Pogos.

For 10 years, illustrators Chantal Bennett and Joel Kimmel have taken road trips around Canada searching for the best chip stands, interviewing the owners and celebrating the colorful stands in drawings and paintings. Their beautiful illustrations capture the eclectic aesthetic of chip stands from British Columbia to Newfoundland.

Sadly, many chip stands are disappearing or being replaced with shiny food trucks. This book serves as an archive of Canada's disappearing chip stands that so many people cherish. It offers up a fresh-cut serving of over 130 illustrations of the best-looking chip stands in the country.

Once you've read this book you'll never look at a chip stand the same way again.

JOEL KIMMEL is an illustrator who specializes in portraits, maps, athletes and travel postcard illustrations. He is a graduate of Sheridan College's illustration program. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Maroon Magazine, Maclean's, Scientific American, Time and the Wall Street Journal. He shares a studio with his wife, illustrator Chantal Bennett.

CHANTAL BENNETT is an editorial illustrator who enjoys illustrating portraits, icons and other things that reflect her passion for history, fashion history and cute vintage things in general. She also has a soft spot for fairytales and turn-of-the-century illustrations. She studied illustration at Parsons the New School for Design in NYC. When not working she enjoys historical sewing, plein air painting, printing on an 1800-pound letterpress and hanging out with her husband, Joel Kimmel, and their beagles, Peanut and Pistache.

House of Anansi Poetry Bash

Join Ottawa Writers Festival for an evening of poetry and conversation celebrating new titles from House of Anansi Press.

Part self-interrogation, part confession, part hospital diary, the intense, heartbreakingly frank poems in BRANDI BIRD'S second collection, Pitiful, detail the author’s ongoing struggles with eating disorders and depression, conditions that disproportionately afflict Indigenous girls, women, and two-spirited persons.

A.F. MORITZ'S twenty-third book of poems originated with an impulse, beginning in April 2019, to write a series of continuous poems. The first goal was to keep them short. The second was to make them separate, in the process reflecting the whole of human life, stable in moments and bodies. In The Wren, Moritz arranges 70 short poems in a sort of galaxy: an apparent scatter, not of stars but of poems, of feeling-thoughts.

GRAEME BEZANSON'S debut collection, Ultra Blue, is a book-length sequence of poems about the emotional lives of boys and the challenges of growing up within contemporary constructions of masculinity. These intense, insistently strange poems developed from Bezanson's struggles with guiding his young son through a culture of toxic masculinity and violence.

Special thanks to our friends at the Great Canadian Theatre Company. With book sales by Perfect Books.

Reserve your free tickets to this limited seating event here!

Murray Mollard Book Signing

Don’t miss Murray Mollard in store signing copies of Winning Pitch: The Canadian Men’s Soccer Team at the World Cup and Beyond ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup!

In 2026, millions of soccer fans will have their eyes on Canada as we co-host the Greatest Show on Earth: the FIFA World Cup in Vancouver and Toronto. And they will wonder—will Canada’s men’s team be heroes or heartbreakers? Winning Pitch: The Canadian Men’s Soccer Team at the World Cup and Beyond provides expert insight into the question of what it will take for Canada’s national men’s team and soccer in Canada to be successful in 2026 and beyond. Though it had recent success at the Copa América, Canada’s men’s soccer team has been here before. The incredible story of Canada’s first World Cup in 1986—featuring many players from British Columbia—and our second appearance in Qatar in 2022 were followed by big letdowns. They provide important lessons for the future.

With more books about soccer in Canada focused on memoirs from standout Canadian soccer greats, something is missing. Winning Pitch fills the gap with a more comprehensive look at the culture and systems necessary for securing Canada’s future soccer fortunes. Weaving together interviews with coaches, fans, executives and players, as well as his own reflections of more than five decades in the sport as both a player and an executive, author and lawyer Murray Mollard criss-crosses the country to understand the people and ideas that shape our history and future with the Beautiful Game.

MURRAY MOLLARD is a former UBC champion player, coach, governor, passionate supporter and observer of the sport in Canada. He is a regular contributor to the sports and op-ed pages of major newspapers such as the Vancouver Sun and The Province. He lives in Vancouver, BC.

Book Signing with Peggy Kleinplatz

Please join Peggy Kleinplatz, Ph.D for a book signing from two of her books: Magnificent Sex and New Directions in Sex Therapy: Innovations and Alternatives, Third Edition.

About the books:

Magnificent Sex is based on the largest, in-depth interview study ever conducted with people who are having extraordinary sex. It gathers the nuggets for remarkable sex from the "experts", distilling them into an attainable blueprint for ordinary lovers who want to make erotic intimacy grow over the course of a lifetime. Looking at factors including individual and relational qualities, empathic communication and the myths and realities of magnificent sex, this book offers accessible and evidence-based guidance for lovers and therapists alike.

It is replete with frank and often humorous interviews with straight and LGBTQ individuals and couples, those who are "vanilla" and "kinky", monogamous and consensually non-monogamous and healthy and chronically ill. This illuminating book explores the implications of the findings to develop a model that effectively tackles the common problems of low desire and frequency. The "cure" for low desire is to create desirable sex!

New Directions in Sex Therapy: Innovations and Alternatives, Third Edition focuses on new and cutting-edge therapy paradigms as alternatives to conventional clinical strategies, challenging practitioners to expand our thinking about how to deal with sexual concerns. In the third edition of this award-winning book, Peggy J. Kleinplatz, Ph.D., brings together the best therapists and sexologists to advance beyond predominant approaches to sexual difficulties.

PEGGY J. KLEINPLATZ, Ph.D is Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Please see www.optimalsexualexperiences.com . She is a Certified Sex Therapist and Educator. Her research focuses on optimizing sexual experience, with a particular interest in sexual health in older adults, people with disabilities and chronic illness and other marginalized populations. Kleinplatz has edited or authored six books including New Directions in Sex Therapy: Innovations and Alternatives, winner of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counsellors and Therapists (AASECT) 2013 Book Award and with A. Dana Menard, Ph.D. Magnificent Sex: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers, winner of the 2021 Society for Sex Therapy and Research Consumer Book Award. In 2015, Kleinplatz received the AASECT Professional Standard of Excellence Award. In 2021, Kleinplatz received the Distinguished Sexual and Gender Health Revolutionary Award from the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health of the Medical School, University of Minnesota. In 2021, she became a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Her research, writing, teaching and clinical work have been intended to challenge, expand and diversify the field of sex therapy.

An Evening with Eckhart Tolle

We are delighted to invite you to a rare and transformational evening with Eckhart Tolle live in Ottawa.

Join us for this unique opportunity to sit with Eckhart as he points you to spiritual awakening and the transformation of consciousness.

With his hallmark warmth, humour and compassion, this evening will connect you with the peace and serenity that arises from living in the moment.

Eckhart’s profound, yet simple teachings have helped countless people from around the globe awaken to a vibrantly alive inner peace in their daily lives. The New York Times has called Eckhart Tolle “the most popular spiritual author in the United States”, and the Watkins Review named him as “the most spiritually influential person in the world”.

ECKHART TOLLE'S writings and life-changing public events have touched millions of lives, garnering fans to the likes of Oprah, the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra. He is the best-selling author of The Power of Now and A New Earth that are widely regarded as the most transformational books of our time.

With book sales by Perfect Books.

Tickets available here!