Thursday, June 15, 2023 6:30 pm – 7:30pm EDT

Toronto Public Library, Yorkville Branch

22 Yorkville Avenue, Toronto M4W 1L4

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Lecturer in contemporary literature and culture and author of Deadly and Slick, Dr. Sita Balani joins editor of Strategy Magazine and author of Halal Sex, Sheima Benembarek and Tyler Pennock, a Two-Spirit professor of Indigenous Studies and author of Blood to discuss the making of sexuality and race under colonialism and the impact on our modern conceptions of everything from the nuclear family to the pursuit of romantic love. In conversation with writer, translator, and multi-arts curator, Nedra Rodrigo.

Question and answer session and book signing to follow. Books available for purchase.

Sita Balani

Dr. Sita Balani is a lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London. She is the co-author of Empire’s Endgame. She has published in Vice, Tribune, the White Review, Novara, Salvage, Ceasefire, Five Dials, Wasafiri, and Open Democracy. She has appeared on BBC3 and Novara Media, and is a regular speaker at events on anti-racism, feminism, education, sexuality, and colonial history.

Sheima Benembarek

SHEIMA BENEMBAREK is a Moroccan Canadian journalist who’s written for The Walrus, Broadview, Maisonneuve, and the Literary Review of Canada. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King’s College, where she was a finalist for the Penguin Random House Canada Best Nonfiction Book Proposal Prize. In 2020, she was chosen as one of the five RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writers of the year. She’s currently a senior editor at Toronto Life.

Nedra Rodrigo

Nedra Rodrigo was born in Sri Lanka and came to Canada during the civil war. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Tamil Community Centre project. She is a co-founder of the Tamil Studies Symposium at York University, where she is completing her PhD and developing an archive of Tamil Resources. She was a Spoken Word artist who has been featured at Scream in High Park, Desh Pardesh and Masala Mendhi Masti, and whose poetry was published in various anthologies. She has translated works by R. Cheran, V.I.S. Jayapalan, Rashmy and others. Her essays have been published in the International Journal of the Humanities, Global Tensions, Global Possibilities; Human Rights and the Arts: Essays on Global Asia; and Studies in Canadian Literature. She founded and runs the bilingual event series the Tam Fam Lit Jam.

Registration is not required, for more details, click here. (Or you can click on the poster)