An Evening with Wayne Johnston @ UNB Reading Series

Name: An Evening with Wayne Johnston @ UNB Reading Series
Start: 2026-05-04T19:00:00-03:00
Location: Memorial Hall, UNB, 9 Bailey Drive, Fredericton, NB

Schedule

Mon, 04 May, 2026 at 07:00 pm

UTC-03:00

Location

Memorial Hall, UNB, 9 Bailey Drive, Fredericton, NB | Fredericton, NB

“If St. John’s looms large in the Canadian literary psyche, this is due in no small measure to the novels of Wayne Johnston, a native of Newfoundland’s capital city and one of its most diligent chroniclers.” —Quill & Quire
On Monday, May 4th, 7 pm, the UNB Reading Series welcomes beloved Atlantic Canadian author Wayne Johnston, launching his new novel, The Novice of Holloway Hall.
This free event takes place at Memorial Hall on the UNB campus, and is open to anyone.
Westminster Bookmark will be there selling books.
About THE NOVICE OF HOLLOWAY HALL:
From award-winning, bestselling author Wayne Johnston comes a boisterous, sweeping tragicomic saga of faith, loyalty, and family secrets that refuse to stay buried
At twenty-eight, Vivvy Holloway is nearly the same height as when she was five. Though she hides her face behind a veil, a different colour and fabric for each day of the week, she brandishes an acerbic wit that far outweighs her small stature.
Having just spent eight years of the 1930s in a convent failing to become a nun, Vivvy is now returning to Holloway Hall, the largest private dwelling in Newfoundland and the crumbling seat of her formidable family. Vivvy’s sister Freda, a doctor, now rules the estate and its fortune. She is also its sole occupant, save for the five-year-old “special member of the family” known as Ivan, who came home with Freda after her failed marriage in the Congo, where she and her husband were missionaries until tragedy struck. Tasked with caring for the boy while Freda works long shifts—and displays increasingly erratic behaviour—Vivvy begins to suspect that something is dangerously amiss in Holloway Hall.
Over the course of a single turbulent week, Vivvy faces off against her domineering sister, her ten cleric brothers, and a host of meddling hangers-on, unearthing long-buried secrets that threaten not only her and Ivan’s place in the family, but the fate of the entire Holloway name.
WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. His #1 nationally bestselling novels include First Snow, Last Light; The Custodian of Paradise; The Navigator of New York; and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Baltimore's Mansion won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, published in 1998, was nominated for sixteen national and international awards including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and was a Canada Reads finalist. In 2011, Johnston was awarded the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award honouring the work of a writer in mid-career. His memoir Jennie’s Boy won the 2023 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Literary Humour and was also a Canada Reads finalist, in 2025.