Featuring Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Jo-Ann Roberts, Jacqueline Halsey, and Marjorie Simmins
Elamin Abdelmahmoud, author of Elbows Up (McClelland & Stewart, 2025)
Elbows Up is in conversation with a book called New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the United States. There are six pieces in Elbows Up from New Romans. I was having a conversation with Stephanie Sinclair (McClelland & Stewart), Leslie Hertig (Vancouver Writers Festival), and Mel Hertig, — who published New Romans with Hertzig Publishing in 1968 — about this out of print book but, you know, what a book! That conversation crash-landed in a moment when we’re having candid opinions about the United States. I felt like there were so many different directions we could take if this same book was written now. The questions we would ask are probably different, in part because the people who make up the Canadian literary scene are much more diverse than they were in 1968. It felt very worthwhile to me.
The meaning of Elbows Up has changed since the book was conceived, but it’s still a kind of shorthand. Canada exists alongside this empire that periodically raises anxieties in Canadians about, you know, how much power we voluntarily hand the United States in terms of trade, or cultural products, or even our imagination. As well, it’s the experience of Indigenous people to contend with the consequences of treaties that have been broken, trade relationships that were always exploitative, friendships that have been proclaimed and then violated. Jesse Wente, who contributed to the book, talked a bit about this when he was on Commotions. He was saying that he couldn’t believe this was the first time some Canadians were contending with the reality of a gigantic empire on your doorstep that has a lot of firepower, economic power, and is threatening to take your land and your culture. In a lot of ways that conversation informed the direction of the book, because the question of empire is not new, and wasn’t when New Romans was written.
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Elamin Abdelmahmoud is a Canadian writer, culture and politics commentator, and broadcaster based in Toronto, Ontario. He is best known for his book Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces (Penguin Random House, 2022) and as the host of Commotions (CBC)
Jo-Ann Roberts, author of Storm the Ballot Box (Nimbus, 2025)
When I lost my bid to become an MP in 2015 I was devastated. I came in second, not bad for a Green Party candidate. But, it was frustrating to discover I had more votes than 131 MPs who were elected. And, the Liberal candidate in our riding had withdrawn from the race, but, unfortunately, still had her name on the ballot. Despite not being in the race she received 8,500 votes. As I wallowed in my loss, there was so much about the process that seemed unfair.
A couple of years later, I was serving as Interim Leader of the Green Party of Canada when the pandemic hit. I decided it was time to try and write a book about what I had learned about politics. I had a unique perspective. I had been on doorsteps and in political party backrooms. I had also spent close to 40 years reporting on politics.
I enrolled in the University of Kings College MFA program in Creative Non-fiction. The program helped me focus my core message. I realized I wanted to know why voter turnout is dropping. Why 11-million Canadians don’t vote and what can be done about it? Just over half of voters between 18 and 34 years old are voting. If this continues we will lose a whole generation of voters. I wrote this book to get Canadians to literally storm the ballot box.
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Jo-Ann Roberts is an award-winning journalist passionate about democracy, public broadcasting, and fighting climate change. She spent 20 years as a CBC Radio host and covered the 2010 Winter Olympics, the NHL Riots in Vancouver, and more elections than she can count. She’s been a candidate in four elections. A runner-up but never a winner. She is the former Interim Leader of the Green Party of Canada.She has an MFA in Creative Non-fiction from King’s College. She hopes her book, Storm the Ballot Box, An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution, which was published in March 2025, and is shortlisted for a Nova Scotia first book award, will start a conversation to get Canadians excited about voting and demanding improvements to democracy.
Jacqueline Halsey, author of Joe and the Wreck of the Tribune (Nimbus, 2025)
Historical fiction is my passion and I love shining the spotlight on not-so-well-known local history stories. When I first heard about Joe Cracker, I was compelled to find out more about him. I knew he was a teen orphan from Herring Cove who rowed his small skiff through a storm to save survivors of a frigate wrecked at the harbour mouth. No one else in the community dared brave the mountainous seas. Even though he was presented to the Lieutenant governor and there is a small monument to him on the Tribune Head rocks, nothing else is known about him. Joe Cracker is only a nickname. I thought this inspiring story deserved to be told, so keeping it as historically accurate as I possibly could, I filled in the blanks. I imagined who Joe was, his friends, the other fishermen and what life in a small fishing community in 1797 would have been like. I imagined Joe’s dreams for a better life, and his quest to find out about his parents. This story was an absolute joy to write.
I was honoured to learn that Joe and the Wreck of the Tribune was shortlisted for the 2026 Ann Connor Brimer award.
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Jacqueline Halsey lives in an old house in Dartmouth overlooking the Halifax harbour. She has a children’s library background and is the author of seven books mostly inspired by anything maritime. Her novel Piper was nominated for the 2019 CCBC Geoffrey Bilson award for youth historical fiction.
Marjorie Simmins, author of In Search of Puffins (Pottersfield Press, 2025)
In Search of Puffins is the third book in a trio of memoirs, which started with Coastal Lives and Year of the Horse. I began the book two years after my husband, Silver Donald Cameron, died in 2020. I wanted to write a third and final book about our life together— an aftermath — but I wasn’t sure I was up to the task.
Fortunately, I found the story I needed to create. The process differed from usual because I needed to accommodate my grief while working. This meant I wrote more slowly than usual, which turned out to be a positive. Polishing the first two chapters took months. The rest of the story followed steadily. In truth I didn’t want to rush the experience of spending creative time with someone I loved, something Don and I had done since the day we met. Now, of course, the exchanges were in my imagination.
I believe that writing this book helped me to heal. I hope it speaks to other grieving hearts as well.
Puffins was written primarily to honour Don. I wrote the story to him, as if he could read it. The story was also written for all those who suffer great loss and must then recreate themselves. Throughout, I celebrate romantic love, the love of friends and family, and the role of creativity, spirituality, and humour as we change and flow in our new lives. The puffins themselves represent beauty and lightness, which bereaved hearts can feel again, in the fullness of time.
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Marjorie Simmins is an award-winning journalist, author, and teacher. Her life-long practice of creative non-fiction adds depth and energy to her memoirs, biographies, and narrative journalism. The author of five books, Simmins’ latest title, In Search of Puffins: Stories of Loss, Light, and Flight, is the third in a trio of memoirs, preceded by Coastal Lives and Year of the Horse. Puffins honours her late husband, writer and filmmaker Silver Donald Cameron, and all who recreate themselves after loss. An unflinching look at the demands of grief, Puffins also celebrates friendship, laughter, and creativity, and how all these help to heal tender hearts. Simmins lives in a good luck house in Truro, Nova Scotia. She is proud to say she not only knows what a tidal bore is, she has seen them barrelling along in the Bay of Fundy.
