The Ampersand Review December Reading Series

This December we’re joined by Coach House author's Kate Cayley and Jumoke Verissimo at Sheridan College Hazel McCallion Campus! Our lineup of talented writers will share their work in a warm and inviting atmosphere. Come sip on some coffee, meet fellow book lovers, and immerse yourself in a world of words. Don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to support local artists and indulge in the magic of storytelling.

Kate Cayley is a fiction writer, playwright, and poet. She has written two short story collections, and Householders, three collections of poetry, , , and Lent, a young adult novel, The Hangman in the Mirror, and a number of plays, which have been performed in Canada, the US and the UK. She has won the Trillium Book Award, the Mitchell Prize for Poetry, an O. Henry Short Story Prize, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction, and a Chalmers Fellowship, and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the K. M. Hunter Award, the Firecracker Award and the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize and the CBC Prize in both poetry and fiction. She has an ongoing writing collaboration with immersive theatre company Zuppa Theatre, most recently on The Archive of Missing Things and This Is Nowhere. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Poetry. She has been writer in residence at McMaster University, Sheridan College and the Toronto Public Library, and mentored emerging writers through the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA, the Humber School for Writers, the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, Diaspora Dialogues, and Sisters Writes. She lives in Toronto with her wife and their three children. Her first novel, Property, is forthcoming in fall 2025 from Coach House Books.

Jumoke Verissimo is a poet and novelist living in Toronto. She is the author of two well-recognized collections: i am memory and The Birth of Illusion, both published in Nigeria and nominated for different awards, including the Nigerian Prize for Literature. Her most recent novel, A Small Silence, received critical acclaim and was nominated for several awards, including the Edinburgh Festival First Book Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. It won the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize. Her writing explores traumatic re/constructions of everyday life and its intersection with gender, focusing on themes of love, loss, and hope. She currently teaches Creative Writing at Toronto Metropolitan University.

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