Breakaway Book Launch with Karissa Donkin

Name: Breakaway Book Launch with Karissa Donkin
Start: 2025-10-09T18:00:00-03:00
Location: Bibliothèque publique de Saint John Free Public Library

Schedule

Thu, 09 Oct, 2025 at 06:00 pm

UTC-03:00

Location

Bibliothèque publique de Saint John Free Public Library | Saint John, NB

Join us as we celebrate Saint John author Karissa Donkin's new book Breakaway: The PWHL and the Women Who Changed the Game.
Karissa will be joined by moderator Julia Wright at the Saint John Free Public Library in Market Square at 6:00 pm.
The Write Cup Bookstore will be on hand with copies of Breakaway, and the author will be available to sign copies afterwards.
ABOUT THE BOOK
When the first puck dropped in the Professional Women’s Hockey League in January 2024, it had been a long time coming. Women have been playing hockey since at least 1890 and playing professionally for decades. But until 2024, even the highest-level female players had never been compensated as professionals: some paid for their own gear and worked second jobs, earning a pittance, if anything, from their chosen profession.
In Breakaway, Karissa Donkin tells the story of the players’ efforts to create the PWHL, long before the first full season in 2024. Following the unnamed 2024 Montreal PWHL team, with some of the best players in the sport, like Marie-Philip Poulin and Erin Ambrose, Donkin takes readers through the League’s founding, the draft process, the practices, and the dramatic arc of the first season. Defying all expectations, with larger crowds and higher revenues than anticipated, this first season was a gamechanger for professional women’s sports leagues.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karissa Donkin writes about women’s hockey and the PWHL for CBC Sports and has worked in newspapers and broadcasting for more than a decade. Since 2016, she has been working with CBC’s Atlantic investigative unit, covering stories that regularly air on national programs across all of CBC’s platforms. Her recent work on New Brunswick’s Child Protective Services was profiled on The Current. She has won a National Newspaper Award and several Atlantic Journalism Awards for her investigative work. Her journalism was also nominated for the prestigious Michener Award. Breakaway is her first book.