Acquiring Editors at Work

Name: Acquiring Editors at Work
Start: 2025-12-07T13:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-12-07T14:00:00-05:00
Location: Casa d'Italia Montreal

Schedule

Sun Dec 07 2025 at 01:00 pm to 02:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Casa d'Italia Montreal | Mount Royal, QC

📍 Main Stage, Salle des célébrations
With:
Leila Marshy, Baraka Books
Curtis John McRae, Véhicule Press
Yashaswi Kesanakurthy, Simon & Schuster Canada
Moderated by Tawhida Tanya Evanson
Who gets to choose which books will be published – and how do they do it? Editors from three publishers will discuss how they decide what to publish, and how writers can improve their chances. Simon & Schuster children’s book editor Yashaswi Kesanakurthy, Baraka Books’ fiction and nonfiction editor Leila Marshy, and Curtis McRae, fiction editor at Véhicule Press, will give us the inside scoop on what acquisitions editors really do.
𝐘𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐰𝐢 𝐊𝐞𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐤𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐲 [yush-us-we kay-sah-nah-koor-thi] is the Children’s Editor at Simon & Schuster Canada. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s MA program in Children’s Literature and Toronto Metropolitan University’s publishing program. Her publishing career began as Publishing Assistant at Tundra Books, PRHC. She then joined HarperCollins Canada as Associate Editor where she developed a vibrant list including The Garden of Lost Socks by Esi Edugyan and Amélie Dubois, The Hockey Skates by Karl Subban and Maggie Zeng, and Mortified by Kristy Jackson and Rhael McGregor. At Simon & Schuster Canada, she remains focused on publishing marginalized, Canadian voices that tell entertaining and transformative stories. Yash lives in Toronto with a magical, if unruly, library that just keeps growing.
𝐋𝐞𝐢𝐥𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐲 is the author of The Philistine (LLP, 2018) and My Thievery of the People (Baraka Books, 2025), and is editor of the anthology Razing Palestine: Punishing Solidarity and Dissent in Canada (Baraka Books, 2025). Daughter of a Palestinian refugee, Marshy lived in Cairo during the First Intifada and worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Palestinian Mental Health Association. She has been a community and political organizer, including founding a dialogue group with the Hasidic community in her local neighbourhood, helping elect the first Hasidic woman to public office in the world. Marshy is Editor at Baraka Books and lives in Montreal.
𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐌𝐜𝐑𝐚𝐞 is the fiction editor at Véhicule Press and the Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief of yolk literary journal. He is the author of Quietly, Loving Everyone (Vehicule Press, 2025). His fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, and others. He won the 2021/22 David McKeen Award, was longlisted for the 2025 DISQUIET Literary Fiction Contest, received an honourable mention in the 2024 Peter Hinchcliffe award, and was a finalist in the 2019 Quebec Writers’ Federation contest for emerging young writers. Curtis teaches English literature at John Abbott College and formerly served as a board member for the Quebec Writers’ Federation.
𝐓𝐚𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐚 𝐓𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐚 𝐄𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 is a poet, novelist, artist and Ashiq. Her work blends poetry, orality, music, movement and film around themes of African diasporic identity, Sufi spirituality and resistance to Western values. Born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, she has roots in Antigua, West Indies. Evanson’s novels include the French Livre des ailes (Marchand de feuilles 2023), and the award-winning Book of Wings (Véhicule 2021); her two poetry collections are Nouveau Griot (Frontenac 2018) and Bothism (Ekstasis 2017). She has an extensive history of spoken word performance, audio recordings and films including the multi-award-winning Afrofuturist concert film CYANO SUN SUITE (2024). Evanson’s work has travelled to festivals across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. She is past director of the Banff Centre Spoken Word Program; past president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation; and 2025 Poet Ambassador in Residence at the League of Canadian Poets. She moonlights as a whirling dervish.