Book Launch at Octopus Books: Walking the Bypass & In the Field
Schedule
Wed, 12 Nov, 2025 at 06:30 pm
UTC-05:00Location
Octopus Books | Ottawa, ON
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Join us for a special evening with Sadiqa de Meijer and Ken Wilson, two writers whose new works ask us to look more closely at the places we inhabit and the ways we move through them. The authors will be joined in conversation by host D.S. Stymeist.Sadiqa de Meijer's In the Field traces the questions that shape our sense of belonging and encounter: what meaning does a birthplace hold, how do we connect with works of art, and how might we honour what remains of the past? These intimate essays invite readers to slow down and notice, to see their own lives refracted through the experiences of others.
In Walking the Bypass, Ken Wilson recounts his unusual project of walking the Regina Bypass, a highway designed with no thought for pedestrians. In prose at once grounded and searching, Wilson situates the highway within the broader histories of land, settlement, and transformation on the prairies, showing how walking—even in the most unlikely places—can open new ways of seeing.
Sadiqa de Meijer is the author of the poetry collections Leaving Howe Island and The Outer Wards. Alfabet/alphabet won the 2021 Governor General Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Her work has also won the CBC Poetry Prize and Arc’s Poem of the Year Contest, and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario.
Ken Wilson is a settler who grew up in the Haldimand Tract in southwestern Ontario. His writing has been published in The Malahat Review, and Queen’s Quarterly. He lives on Treaty 4 territory in oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, Saskatchewan), where he teaches English and film studies courses at the University of Regina.
D.S. Stymeist is the author of poetry collections Cluster Flux and The Bone Weir, which was a finalist for the Canadian Author’s Association Poetry Award. He currently teaches creative writing at Carleton University. As former president of VERSe Ottawa, he helped organize VERSeFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival.
This event is free and open to all. Please RSVP to help us know how many guests to expect. Doors open at 6:30pm.
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Where is it happening?
Octopus Books, 116 Third Ave, Ottawa, ON K1S 2K1, CanadaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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