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Spring 2026 Events
Due to high demand, more tickets have been released for these events.
First release tickets sold out fast.
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TAYARI JONES is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and his year-end roundup. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award and has been published in two dozen countries. Jones is the C.H. Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and lives in Atlanta.
About Kin:
A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
A novel about mothers and daughters, about friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
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Heather Marshall is the #1 bestselling author of Looking for Jane and The Secret History of Audrey James. She worked in politics and communications before turning her attention to her true passion: storytelling. Heather lives with her family near Toronto.
About Liberty Street:
From the #1 bestselling Canadian author of Looking for Jane comes a riveting novel about one journalist's harrowing journey into an infamous real-life 1960s women's prison—and the detective who uncovers her story decades later.
Inspired by true events, Liberty Street is at once poignant and dazzling—an unforgettable, intertwining story about resilience, mental health, and the power of female connection.
An Evening with Maggie Helwig
Tuesday May 5th
6pm to 8pm
The Local Community Food Centre
Stratford, ON
Light refreshments
Audience Q & A and book signing to follow the discussion
*A portion of every ticket sale will be donated to the Local CFC.
Maggie Helwig (she/they) is a white settler in Tkaronto/Toronto, and is the author of fifteen books and chapbooks, including Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community, which was awarded the 2025 Toronto Book Award, and Girls Fall Down (Coach House Books, 2008), which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award and chosen as the One Book Toronto in 2012. Helwig is a long-timesocial justice activist, and also an Anglican priest, and has been the rector of the Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields since 2013.
ONE OF THE GLOBE AND MAIL'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025
WINNER OF THE 2025 TORONTO BOOK AWARD
"Striking, elegant." – Publishers Weekly, ★ STARRED Review
An activist priest provides sanctuary for an encampment of unhoused people in her churchyard
The housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind.
Encampment tells the story of Helwig’s life-long activism as preparation for her fight to keep her churchyard open to people needing a home. More importantly, it introduces us to the Artist, to Jeff, and to Robin: their lives, their challenges, their humanity. It confronts our society’s callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused and demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace.
TERRY FALLIS grew up in Toronto and earned an engineering degree from McMaster University. Drawn to politics at an early age, he worked for cabinet ministers in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park.
His first novel, The Best Laid Plans, began as a podcast, then was self-published, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, was re-published by McClelland & Stewart to great reviews, was crowned the 2011 winner of CBC’s Canada Reads as “the essential Canadian novel of the decade,” and was adapted as a CBC Television series and a stage musical.
His next two novels, The High Road and Up and Down were finalists for the Leacock Medal, and in 2015, he won the prize a second time, for his fourth book, No Relation. His other novels include Poles Apart, One Brother Shy, Albatross, Operation Angus, and A New Season and were all national bestsellers.
Bestselling and beloved author Terry Fallis' tenth novel, The Marionette, introduces readers to a new hero, James Norval: a world-famous thriller writer whose life takes an unexpected turn from the pages of his novels into the perilous world of espionage.
James Norval has built a successful career crafting the thrilling adventures of his fictional hero, Hunter Chase, a character admired by readers and movie-goers worldwide. But despite his fame and fortune, Norval has always harboured a secret dream of living the life he only writes about—a life as a field operative for CSIS, Canada's Security Intelligence Service. In fact, nearly thirty years earlier, he washed out of the CSIS recruitment program, and it's haunted him ever since.
But that long-held dream becomes a reality when a series of unfortunate events lands Norval in a foreign prison. Rescued by CSIS, he is given an unexpected opportunity: to use his unique position as the favourite writer of Mali's newly installed president to assist in a delicate and dangerous mission. With the help of agent Lauren Cooper, Norval must infiltrate the Malian government and execute a daring plan to exfiltrate fifteen Canadian nationals before the corrupt powers that control the country uncover their true intentions.
The Marionette is a comic thriller by a master of the craft. Full of Terry Fallis' signature wit and combined with an exhilarating high-stakes plot, this is a must-read for fans of espionage and intrigue.
Stratford Arts & Lectures BOOK BAR
{Carefully crafted} bookstore
Introducing the BOOK BAR,
a micro bookstore located inside
the fun and fabulous Matilda Gallery & Art Bar.
It's also our HQ & Box Office.
The BOOK BAR is where you can purchase tickets
to our events, shop a curated selection of great books,
and sip a cocktail, all while enjoying the incredible art.
SAL's BOOK BAR. For dreamers and thinkers.
Art, books, and cocktails.
SAL's BOOK BAR @ Matilda Gallery & Art Bar
85 Downie Street, Stratford, ON.
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A Literary Substack
On writing, and writers - from a reader and writer, and sometime bookseller.
Interviews, literary links, book recommendations, and stories. Lots of stories.
Written by Rina Barone, director, Stratford Arts & Lectures.
Our Past Events
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Book Signing with Kendra Coulter
Our Story
Stratford Arts & Lectures offers engaging programming with some of today's leading figures in the literary arts.
Year round, Stratford Arts & Lectures hosts onstage conversations and carefully crafted events with incredible authors, critics, and cultural figures as we explore the creative process, ideas, and our relationship to the world around us.
We're also a micro bookstore - SAL's BOOK BAR - located inside Matilda Gallery & Art Bar where you'll find a curated selection of new books to discover, to inspire and to spark conversation.
SAL's BOOK BAR. For thinkers and dreamers.
Stratford Arts & Lectures brings readers and writers together. This is where stories come to life.
