Graeme Gibson Talk 2024 | Featuring Margaret Atwood, John Vaillant, Catherine Abreu, and Nahlah Ayed
.Saturday September 21, 2024 | 4 p.m.
Harbourfront Centre Theatre, 231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, ON
Tickets: Pass Required | Starting at $34.99 for a Saturday Pass — more information here
About this event
Join the conversation on the challenges facing our fast-warming world. Featuring an introduction by Margaret Atwood, the 2024 PEN Canada Graeme Gibson Talk will have bestselling non-fiction writer John Vaillant, author of the multi-award-winning Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast in conversation with Catherine Abreu, one of Canada’s most influential thinkers on global climate policy, discuss the burning questions and challenges facing our fast-warming world.
Their conversation, moderated by CBC Radio IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed, will be the fourth annual PEN Canada Graeme Gibson talk at TIFA, a series founded in 2021 to honour the legacy of renowned Canadian author and writers’ advocate, Graeme Gibson (1934–2019).
Sponsored by Penguin Random House Canada. It is produced in partnership by PEN Canada, the Toronto International Festival of Authors and CBC Radio IDEAS.
More information, tickets and passes.
About the speakers
John Vaillant’s acclaimed, award-winning nonfiction books, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, were national bestsellers. His debut novel, The Jaguar’s Children, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. His most recent book, Fire Weather, won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Non-Fiction, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. Vaillant has received the Governor General’s Literary Award, British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, and the Pearson Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. He has written for, among others, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Walrus. He lives in Vancouver.
Catherine Abreu is an internationally recognized, award-winning climate justice advocate with 15 years of experience in the heart of the global climate movement. She is the newly appointed Director of the International Climate Politics Hub, a global network of influential actors working to accelerate climate action by engaging in multilateral fora like the UN. Recognized for her diplomacy, communications, and coalition-building skills, she’s one of the world’s top 100 climate policy influencers according to Apolitical. She is one of 14 appointed members of Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body, the legally-mandated expert body tasked with providing advice to government on pathways to meet its climate commitments. She serves as an advisor to the Canadian Climate Institute and sits on the Boards and steering committees of several organizations, including Climate Action Network Canada, Canada’s Affordability Action Council and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. expertise makes her a vital figure in climate policy and action, shaping global discussions on the transition toward clean energy.
Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning TV series, her novels include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize; The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam; and Hag-Seed.
Nahlah Ayed, the host of CBC Radio’s Ideas, is an award-winning veteran foreign news reporter who spent nearly a decade in the Middle East covering the region’s many conflicts, and later in London where she covered major stories from Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Europe’s refugee crisis; and the Brexit vote and its fallout. In 2012, her memoir, A Thousand Farewells: A Reporter’s Journey From Refugee Camp to the Arab Spring, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award.