Women and Gender Studies InstituteWomen and Gender Studies Institute
Women and Gender Studies at University of Toronto, Another Story Bookshop and Simon and Schuster Canada present
Friday, September 12th at Convocation Hall, University of Toronto
Doors open at 5:30pm/ Event begins at 7pm
Featuring Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, audience Q & A and book signing
Tickets $15 general admission, or $50 Book and Ticket | RSVP HERE
Limited free tickets for University of Toronto students: please click here for details
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Convocation Hall is a wheelchair accessible venue. The main floor has limited seating for seating/mobility requirements. ASL interpretation will be provided. If you require accessible seating, or would like to reserve ASL seating in front of the interpreter, please email accessiblity@anotherstory.ca.
Cosponsored by: PEN Canada; New College and Victoria University in the University of Toronto; University of Toronto Departments of: Anthropology; Arts, Culture, Media, University of Toronto Scarborough; English; Geography; History; Political Science; Centres for: Comparative Literature; Criminology and Sociolegal Studies; Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity; Diaspora and Transnational Studies; Sexual Diversity Studies; South Asian Studies; South Asian Critical Humanities at University of Toronto Mississauga; the Asian Institute.
About the book:
In her first work of memoir, Roy explores the fierce, beautiful, and complicated bond with her mother, Mary Roy—an unflinching educator, activist, and force of nature who shaped Arundhati’s life as a woman, a writer, and a political thinker. From a rebellious childhood in Kerala to international literary acclaim, Roy’s journey is told with the poetic intensity and fearless honesty that have defined her career.
This is more than a conversation about a book—it’s an intimate exploration of love, grief, memory, and liberation. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear from one of the most powerful literary voices of our time as she reflects on identity, artistry, and the indelible mark of a mother’s presence.
“The world has never had to face such global confusion. Only in facing it can we make sense of what we have to do. And this is precisely what Arundhati Roy does. She makes sense of what we have to do. Thereby offering an example. An example of what? Of being fully alive in our world, such as it is, and of getting close to and listening to those for whom this world has become intolerable.”
—John Berger
Arundhati Roy is the author of The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which has been translated into more than forty languages and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. Roy has also published several works of nonfiction including The End of Imagination, The Doctor and the Saint, My Seditious Heart, and Azadi. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and in 2024 the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” She lives in Delhi.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg musician, writer and academic, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the boundaries between story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.