Silk Road Literary Festival

Meridian Arts Centre

 

5040 Yonge St,
North York, ON M2N 6R8

Saturday, August 17th, 2024
10am–9:30 pm

Click Below to Play

Join us for an unforgettable celebration of stories, creativity, and inspiration

  • Zarqa Nawaz is a Canadian film and television producer, public speaker, journalist, and former broadcaster. She is the author of the memoir Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, which was shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She also created the hit CBC comedy series Little Mosque on the Prairie, the world’s first sitcom about a Muslim community living in the West, and is the creator and star of the CBC series Zarqa. Zarqa's most recent novel is Jameela Green Ruins Everything, which was published by Simon and Schuster in 2022. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with her loving but long-suffering family.

  • Elamin Abdelmahmoud is the host of CBC Radio’s daily arts, pop culture and entertainment show COMMOTION, and a former writer for BuzzFeed News. His work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Maclean's, Rolling Stone and others. Elamin is the author of Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces, a number one national bestseller, a Globe 100 book, and a New York Times notable book.

  • Saeed Teebi is a writer and lawyer based in Toronto. His debut collection of short stories, Her First Palestinian, published in 2022, was a finalist for numerous awards, including the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Award. His next book will be a work of non-fiction titled You Will Not Kill Our Imagination, examining how being Palestinian entails a fundamental assault on the imagination, and how writers and artists can be at the forefront of overcoming it. He is also working on a debut novel.

  • Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His new novel, What Strange Paradise, was released in July, 2021 and won the Giller Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It was also named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and several other publications. Omar lives near Portland, Oregon, where is on the faculty of the Pacific University MFA in Writing program.

  • Uzma Jalaluddin is the author of four bestselling novels, most recently MUCH ADO ABOUT NADA (2023), which the New York Times described as, “in a word, brilliant.” Her debut novel, AYESHA AT LAST (2019) was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2019 and is in development for film in Canada. Her second novel, HANA KHAN CARRIES ON (2021) was named a Best Romance Novel by the Washington Post and is currently in development for a feature film by Amazon Studios and Mindy Kaling. Her first play, THE RISHTA - a family farce about arranged marriage - debuted in Spring 2023 at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre, commissioned by the Silk Road Institute. A popular and prolific public speaker, Uzma has spoken to high school students, university lectures, and participated in book clubs, library events, and literary festivals around the world, in addition to many radio, podcast and television interviews with NPR, Good Morning America, and the CBC. She currently lives in the GTA with her husband and two teenage sons, where she teaches high school.

  • Catherine Hernandez (she/her) is an award-winning author and screenwriter. She is a proud queer woman who is of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and Indian descent and married into the Navajo Nation. Her first novel, Scarborough, won the Jim Wong-Chu Award for the unpublished manuscript; was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, the Evergreen Forest of Reading Award, the Edmund White Award, and the Trillium Book Award; and a finalist for Canada Reads 2022. She has written the critically acclaimed plays Singkil, The Femme Playlist and Eating with Lola and the children’s books M Is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book, I Promise and and Where Do Your Feelings Live? She wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Scarborough. It was the 1st runner up for the coveted People’s Choice Award at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, won the Shawn Mendes Foundation Changemaker Award, was nominated for 11 Canadian Screen Awards and won 8, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Her second novel, Crosshairs, published simultaneously in Canada and the US and the UK, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award and made the CBC's Best Canadian Fiction, NOW Magazine's 10 Best Books, Indigo Best Book, Audible Best Audiobooks and NBC 20 Best LGBTQ Books list of 2020. Her third novel, The Story of Us, about the extraordinary friendship between a caregiver and her elderly client, was an instant national bestseller. She is currently working on a few television projects. Her fourth novel, Behind You, about a young girl growing up in Scarborough when a serial killer was at large, was published this year and was an instant national bestseller. Before it hit the shelves, it was optioned by Conquering Lion Pictures to become a feature film, with Catherine writing the screenplay.

  • Ausma Zehanat Khan holds a Ph.D. in international human rights law with a specialization in military intervention and war crimes in the Balkans. She is the author of eleven novels, four anthology contributions, and the middle grade nonfiction book Ramadan, which was a finalist for numerous children’s book awards.

    Ausma is the author of the award-winning Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty mystery series, which begins with The Unquiet Dead, a novel based on the Bosnian genocide, and concludes with A Deadly Divide, a story inspired by the Quebec Mosque shooting. The Unquiet Dead won the Barry Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, and was a Macavity Award finalist.

    Ausma is also the author of the trailblazing Khorasan Archives fantasy quartet, a series set along the Silk Road that is steeped in Islamic history. The Khorasan Archives begins with the groundbreaking novel, The Bloodprint, a tale of two women warriors who are fierce defenders of women’s rights, and are scholars of the Qur’an.

    Most recently, Ausma has published her Blackwater Falls crime series featuring Detective Inaya Rahman. The series includes the crime novel Blood Betrayal, a Nero Award finalist that recently won the Colorado Book Award. She is presently working on the next book in the series. Both of Ausma’s crime series have been optioned for television.

    Ausma is also a contributor to the anthologies Private Investigations, Sword Stone Table, The Perfect Crime and A Thousand Nights. She is the founder of the Muslim Writers Index, and previously served as Editor in Chief of Muslim Girl Magazine. A British-born Canadian and former law professor, Khan recently moved from Colorado to the Washington, D.C. area with her husband.

Silk Road Literary Festival '24 Itinerary

Silk Road Literary Festival '24 Itinerary

August 17

Meridian Arts Centre
Toronto, ON

Welcome & Housekeeping

In Conversation with

Uzma Jalaluddin

In Conversation with

Ausma Zehanat Khan

Break

In Conversation with

Catherine Hernandez

In Conversation with

Saeed Teebi

Networking & Break

Group Panel

Headlining Authors

In Conversation with

Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Break

In Conversation with

Zarqa Nawaz

In Conversation with

Omar El Akkad

Evening Poetry Reading & Mixer

Fareh Malik

Farah Ghafoor

Furqan Mohamed

Sanna Wani

Manahil Bandukwala

Mariam Pirbhai

Wali Shah

  • Fareh Malik is a BIPOC artist from Hamilton, Ontario, as well as a seasoned spoken word poet and established author. Fareh was named the 2022 RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award winner, as well as the 2023 winner of the Austin Clarke Prize for Literary Excellence. Fareh's debut book Streams that Lead Somewhere was published by Mawenzi House Publishers and won the Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry. Fareh was named a finalist for the 2021 Best of the Net anthology, the 2024 ARC Poem of the Year, and the 2024 National Magazine Awards. His work will also be included in Best Canadian Poetry 2025. Fareh is currently a poet and author working on his second book.

  • Sanna Wani is the author of My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022), the winner of the 2023 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She is the creator and host of the podcast, Poet Talk, and a member of the Daybreak Poets Collective. She lives in Toronto.

  • Manahil Bandukwala is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books 2024) and MONUMENT (Brick Books 2022). She is the co-creater of Reth our Reghistan, a multidisciplinary project exploring folklore from Pakistan through poetry, sculpture, and community arts. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com. 


  • Based in Scarborough, Farah Ghafoor is an award-winning poet whose debut collection, Shadow Price, is forthcoming from House of Anansi in spring 2025. Her poems have been taught in postsecondary courses, awarded the E.J Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry from the University of Toronto, longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and recognized by the League of Canadian Poets among other organizations. Her work appears in The Walrus, Room, The Fiddlehead, Prism International, CV2, Halal if You Hear Me (Haymarket Press, 2019), New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims (Red Hen Press, 2021), and elsewhere. Follow her work on Instagram @ShadowPricePoems or by subscribing to her newsletter on FarahGhafoor.com.

  • As an alumni of RBC’s Top 25 Canadian Immigrants, Wali Shah is a poet and motivational speaker. He’s delivered TED talks, created poetic messages for corporate groups, narrated voice overs for commercials, and spoken at hundreds of schools and colleges across North America. Wali’s message of social change, and his work with empowering a generation of youth, led him to serving his hometown as Poet Laureate for the City of Mississauga. Wali closed out President Barack Obama's 2020 visit to Toronto, with a poem written particularly for the event.  He's impressed notable figures with his freestyle poetry and performances, including: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Kendrick Lamar. Wali’s work inspires thousands to follow his voice, his journey, and his advocacy  —  Wali Shah is the people’s messenger.

  • Mariam Pirbhai is an academic and creative writer. She is full professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she specializes and teaches courses in postcolonial and diasporic literatures, and creative writing. Her newly released book of creative nonfiction titled Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging (Wolsak & Wynn, 2023), was a 2023 Foreword Indies finalist for Nature/Nonfiction and received Honourable Mention for the 2024 Alanna Bondar Memorial Book Prize. Pirbhai is also the author of a novel titled Isolated Incident (Mawenzi 2022), winner of the 2023 Independent Publishers’ (IPPY) gold medal for Multicultural Fiction and silver medal for Regional Canadian Fiction, and a short story collection titled Outside People and Other Stories (Inanna 2017), winner of the 2018 Independent Publishers’ (IPPY) and 2019 American BookFest awards. She has authored and edited pioneering academic works on the literatures of the global South Asian diaspora, including Mythologies of Migration, Vocabularies of Indenture: Novels of the South Asian Diaspora in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific (University of Toronto Press, 2009), and has served as President of the Canadian Association for Postcolonial Studies (formerly known as CACLALS), Canada’s longest-running scholarly association devoted to postcolonial and global anglophone literatures. The daughter of Pakistani immigrants to Canada, Pirbhai is deeply committed to examining the history and impact of British imperialism, forms of anticolonial resistance and decolonization, as well as social justice issues impacting migrant and diasporic communities. She resides in Waterloo, Ontario, where she is grateful to live and work in the traditional territories of the Neutral, Anishnawbe and Haudenosaunee peoples. 

  • Furqan Mohamed is a writer and educator from Toronto interested in all things culture, diaspora, kinship, and abolition. She has written for publications such as Room Magazine, Canthius, Maisonneuve, and The Local, where she was an inaugural Journalism Fellow and 2022 Digital Publishing Award nominee. Her debut chapbook collection of poetry and prose, "a small homecoming," was published by Party Trick Press in 2021. You can find more of her poetry as part of the "Poems in Passage" project on the TTC, an episode of "Dreams in Vantablack," streaming on CBC Gem, and a 2022 artist residency with the inPrint Collective in collaboration with the Mackenzie House museum. She has served as a moderator and facilitator for the Toronto Black Film Festival, the Montreal International Black Film Festival, and the Mayworks Festival Of Working People. Forever occupied with language, Furqan currently works on sales, marketing, and community for trace press, an independent publisher concerned with literary translation, along with building the reading series "Who's Afraid?" and completing her Master of Arts in Child Study and Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

2024 FESTIVAL PARTNERS

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