Current Season

The SMU Reading Series presents

SUE MURTAGH

reading from her debut story-collection We're Not Rich,

& in conversation with Alexander MacLeod

Wed. 23 October 2024 | 7 p.m.

Atrium 101 | SMU Campus

‘all the big, too-human catastrophes coupled with the searing moments of sweet clarity that get us through.’ —Lisa Moore, author of This is How We Love

Sue Murtagh (she/her) lives in Halifax. Her writing has appeared in The Nashwaak Review, Grain, carte blanche, the Humber Literary Review, The New Quarterly and Yolk Literary. She won the Budge Wilson Short Story Prize in 2016 with a story written in a creative writing course at Saint Mary's University. In 2020, she apprenticed with Alexander MacLeod through the WFNS Alistair MacLeod mentorship program. She then graduated with distinction in 2022 from the Humber School of Writers, working with Danila Botha. We're Not Rich is her first book.

Admission free. | All welcome.

Presented in collaboration with Nimbus Publishing, Bookmark, and the Department of English Language and Literature.

The SMU Reading Series is back for the fall season with a kick-off musical event at the Halifax Public Library, Central Branch:

Wed. 16 Oct. 2024 at 7 p.m., in the Paul O’Regan Hall

THE SIGN OF JONAS, an apocalypse folktale

by Luke Hathaway & Benton Roark; performed by Benton Roark & Mother Country

Sparse in construction, timeless in imagery, arcane in meaning, mythological in characters and narrative, The Sign of Jonas is an apocalypse folk tale — a story of personal and cultural collapse, and regeneration.

Join us as we bring to life this song cycle lost and found. The fragments of text speak of journeys, of death and rebirth, of decay and regrowth; the music, blending Baroque polyphony, art song, old-timey, and ambient styles, is a ceremonialized cycle of part songs, responsorials, rounds, and incantations.

This event is free and open to the public; supported by the Halifax Public Library, the SMU Reading Series, ANIMA, & Arts for Everyone.