Join us for a very special Coast Lines and Coffee presented as part of Memorial’s 100th-anniversary celebration and in partnership with the SPARKS Literary Festival.
From the very beginning, the focus of the Coast Lines Book Club has been Newfoundland and Labrador’s literary landscape, a terrain largely populated by writers who got their start at Memorial University’s Department of English and its creative writing program. We are pleased to present a panel of esteemed current and former faculty members and writers – Mary Dalton (MA'75), Lisa Moore, Larry Mathews, Aaron Tucker – who will discuss the intersections of Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador’s writing and publishing community and the 40th anniversary of the creative writing program, in conversation with writer, broadcaster, and Coast Lines alumnus William Ping (BA'18, MA'20).
The Memorial University Bookstore will be onsite with various Coast Lines titles for sale and our guests of honour will be happy to sign copies of their books following the panel discussion.
We look forward to welcoming you to this special event.
MARY DALTON (MA'75) is the author of six books of poetry, among them Merrybegot, Red Ledger, Hooking, and Interrobang (2024), as well as a prose miscellany, Edge: Essays, Reviews, Interviews from Palimpsest Press, and several chapbooks. Her poetry has been widely anthologized in Canada and appeared in anthologies in the U.S., Ireland, England, and Belgium. The book version of her 2020 Pratt Lecture, The Vernacular Strain in Newfoundland Poetry, was released by Breakwater in 2022. Dalton served as Poet Laureate of the City of St. John’s 2019-22. She lives in St. John’s, N.L. Currently Professor Emerita of English at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, she is the editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2026, forthcoming from Biblioasis.
LISA MOORE is the author of the bestselling novels Alligator, February, and Caught; the story collections Open and Something for Everyone; and a young adult novel, Flannery. Her most recent publication is the non-fiction Invisible Prisons: Jack Whalen’s Tireless Fight for Justice. Her books have been finalists for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, CBC Canada Reads, the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Man Booker Prize, among many other honours and accolades. Lisa lives in St. John’s, N.L. and is a professor of creative writing at Memorial University.
AARON TUCKER is the author of seven books, including the novels Soldiers, Hunter's Not Cowboys and Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos (both with Coach House Books). His poetry and collaborative new media work engaging with machine translation and 3-D printing have been shown across Canada, the United States, Norway, and Brazil. His scholarly work on facial recognition technologies won the Governor General's Gold Medal and his writing on artificial intelligence has been widely published in North America. He is currently an assistant professor at Memorial University, teaching creative writing and communication and media studies.
WILLIAM PING (BA'18, MA'20) is a novelist and journalist, born and raised in St. John’s, N.L. His debut novel Hollow Bamboo was published by HarperCollins in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the BMO Winterset Award, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award as well as being longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award. He has previously been published in ‘Us, Now,’ Hard Ticket and Riddle Fence. William is also known for his contributions to CBC News, where he can most often be heard reading the news.
Event Details
Date: Saturday, April 26, 2025
Location: Emera Innovation Exchange, Signal Hill Campus
Time: 5 - 7 p.m. NST; the panel discussion runs from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. It will also be live-streamed.
Ticket Price: $25 CDN + 4.5% processing fee and 15% HST for a total of $30.04.
Your ticket includes a reception with hot and cold appetizers, a panel discussion, a book signing, and parking. There will also be a cash bar.
VISA or MASTERCARD only.
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