Panel hosted by Mattea Roach among the events featured at 2025 Festival of Literary Diversity

CBC

24-04-2025

A panel hosted by Mattea Roach is among the events featured at 2025 Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD).
Running from April 27 to May 4, the FOLD spotlights work by diverse authors from communities that are typically underrepresented in Canadian publishing. The Brampton, Ont.-based festival features both live online and in-person events with authors from Canada and around the world taking part.
The panel hosted by Roach, with writers Tanya Talaga, Amal Elsana Alh'jooj and Morgan Campbell, breaks down how to have difficult conversations in a constructive way. It will take place on May 3 at 11 a.m. at The Rose and will be featured in a future episode of Bookends.
Talaga is a writer and journalist of Anishinaabe and Polish descent. She is a member of Fort William First Nation. Her book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award. All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward was the basis for the 2018 CBC Massey Lectures.
Her most recent work is the book and four-part documentary called The Knowing, which is nominated for the 2025 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
Alh'jooj is a professor at McGill University and a founder of several NGOs including Arab-Jewish Centre for Equality and Economic Empowerment and Cooperation. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and won the New Israel Fund's Human Rights Award in 2013. She is the founder and executive director of the organization PLEDJ (Promoting Leadership, Empowerment, Development and Justice). A Bedouin Palestinian activist born in Israel, she wrote the memoir Hope is a Woman's Name.
Campbell is an Ontario-based journalist and a senior contributor at CBC Sports. He was a sports writer at the Toronto Star for over 18 years. His work highlights where sports intersect with off-the-field issues like race, culture, politics and business. His memoir My Fighting Family is his first book.
Other events include writing workshops and a panel featuring Canada Reads all-stars Kamal Al-Solaylee, David Chariandy and katherena vermette.
Al-Solaylee's memoir Intolerable was a contender on Canada Reads 2015, when it was defended by Kristin Kreuk. Chariandy's novel Brother was shortlisted for Canada Reads in 2019 and was defended by actor and model Lisa Ray. vermette's novel The Break was defended by Candy Palmater in 2017.
This year, FOLD is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
"This is a big milestone," said Jael Richardson, a Canadian author and executive director of FOLD, in a press statement. "We've been through a lot over these last 10 years and we've learned a lot too."
Richardson is a writer, editor, activist and the former books columnist for Q on CBC Radio. Her books include the picture book Because You Are and the nonfiction book The Stone Thrower, which was adapted into a picture book of the same name. Richardson's debut novel, Gutter Child, was published in 2021 and was a finalist for the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
"The theme, a Decade of Change, invites us to look at what we've accomplished with the FOLD and where we want to go next. It will also allow us to examine what's happening — and not happening — in publishing right now," she said.