Anakana Schofield: Library of Brothel

Loosely inspired by the architecture and atmosphere of Western Front’s own building, Anakana Schofield's Library of Brothel (Knopf Canada, 2026) imagines a precarious and unruly space shaped by labour, care, and collective survival.

“Do you want to come in? Come here. Come in. Stop resisting. You are on the mat now. Just step over it. And in you come.”

Enter Anakana Schofield’s bedazzling “Library of Brothel”: a building perched in a city where jobs are scarce, no one can find a date, and many struggle just to be housed. Rumours swirl around the crumbling structure and rapacious developers have their eyes on it. But what we find inside is a unique economy: customers take shelter, workers love their professions, and each room offers a new kind of intellectual stimulation. How can such a precarious place survive?

Riotous, dramatic, passionate and funny, "Library of Brothel" is a cri de coeur for human connection and the right to meaningful work.

The event will begin with a conversation with curator, cultural worker, and writer Caitlin Jones, and will be followed by a reading from the book by Schofield.

Copies of Library of Brothel will be available for purchase at the event from Pulpfiction Books. Tea, coffee, and light refreshments will be available.

Anakana Schofield is a Vancouver-based Irish-Canadian writer. She is the author of four novels: Library of Brothel (Knopf Canada, 2026), Bina: A Novel in Warnings (Knopf Canada, 2019), Martin John (Biblioasis, 2015) and Malarky (Biblioasis, 2012). Her novels have won numerous literary awards including the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and the Amazon.ca Debut Novel Award. She’s been twice shortlisted for the UK Goldsmiths Prize for innovative fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Martin John was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2015. Her essays and columns appear regularly in The Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. She’s written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Irish Times and Book Post.

Caitlin Jones is a long-time cultural worker, curator, writer and consultant—working with and within a range of institutional and independent contexts. As Executive Director of BCA (formerly BC Artscape) she was responsible for the development and operations of multiple affordable real-estate projects for the cultural community. As the Executive Director of Western Front, in addition to her director role, she curated programming, policy and dialogue around issues of equity and urban development, and the roles of artists within it. Prior to her move to BC she worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Rhizome.org in New York. Her writings on contemporary art and new media have appeared in a wide range of exhibition catalogs, periodicals and other international publications including Mousse, The Believer, Documents in Contemporary Art series, among others.

The Grand Luxe Hall is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of 26 stairs. While plans for a full building upgrade to facilitate access for wheelchair users are still underway, events in the Grand Luxe Hall are made available virtually via high-quality livestream here. ASL interpretation is available upon request. Please contact us at [email protected] or +1 (604) 876 9343 to arrange. Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here.

Presented in partnership with Knopf Canada and Pulpfiction Books.

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