In Conversation: Nahlah Ayed with Leilani Farha

For over 60 years, the Massey Lectures has been regarded as one of the most acclaimed lecture series in Canada. This annual five-part series, hosted in five cities across the country, is co-sponsored by CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press, and Massey College in the University of Toronto. It is broadcast each November on CBC’s IDEAS.

Global director of The Shift, an international human rights organization focused on housing, finance, and climate, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, Leilani Farha is the newest name to join a long list of thinkers, writers, and scholars as the 2026 Massey lecturer. Through intimate encounters with people unhoused and inadequately housed on six continents, and her own reckoning from the centre of global housing debates, she will talk with Nahlah Ayed about housing as a foundation for justice. She’ll discuss how the same logic that justifies dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of their lands and resources now prices out young people, displaces tenants, destroys communities, and disappears homeless people.

IMPORTANT DETAILS:

1.) Doors open at 3:30. Seating is not assigned.

2 .) For accessibility information please refer to the "accessibility" tab at victoriafestivalofauthors.ca.

3 .) There is no general parking at the theatre. Free parking is available on side streets (Moss Street, Linden Avenue, and Fort Street), as well as the Central Middle School parking lot on Fort Street. Please abide by parking signs; do not park where it is posted Residential Only, as you may be ticketed. Please give yourself plenty of time to find parking before your event.

5.) Contact VFA by September 30 for ASL interpretation or in-person captioning.