Living Room Lit
The Wallflower, 326 James Street North, Hamilton, ON
Thursday 25 June 2026 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm (EDT)Get cozy in the back room of The Wallflower and let us read you some poems and stories. Featuring authors Alison Gadsby, Jaclyn Desforges, Lisa Richter, Liz Worth and Margo LaPierre. Raffle! Coziness! Comfy sofas! All are welcome. Feel free to bring your knitting.
ACCESSIBILITY
The front entrance of the building has no step, and The Wallflower has a fully accessible washroom. However, there are two steps leading from the front bar to the back lounge where the event is taking place. Masking is highly encouraged. If there’s anything we can do to support your access, please let us know.
The Readers
ALISON GADSBY writes in Tkaronto/Toronto where she lives in a multigenerational home that includes several dogs. Her story collection Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive (Guernica, 2026) includes stories that were also published in various literary magazines, like Blank Spaces, The Temz Review, The Ex-Puritan, Blue Lake Review and more. Her novel, Dreams of the Weary will be published in 2028 (Palimpsest Press). Alison is the founder/host of Junction Reads, a prose reading series.
JACLYN DESFORGES is the queer and neurodivergent author of a short story collection, Weird Babies (The Porcupine's Quill, 2026), a poetry collection, Danger Flower (Anstruther Books, 2021), and a picture book, Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020). She teaches creative writing at Wilfrid Laurier University and lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner and daughter. Jaclyn is working on her first novel, Eyelash Person, with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
LISA RICHTER is a Toronto-based poet, writer, and educator. She is the author of two previous collections, including Nautilus and Bone, whose honours include the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and will be serving as the next Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer-in-Residence at McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library. Her newest book, Sublunary, is now out with University of Alberta Press.
LIZ WORTH is a Canadian poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer. Her poetry books include Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea; The Truth is Told Better This Way; and No Work Finished Here: Rewriting Andy Warhol (Book*hug Press). The latter title was also an appropriation project, remixing Andy Warhol's a: A Novel into poetry.
Margo LaPierre is a freelance book editor and poet. Her second poetry collection, Ajar, was published by Guernica Editions in 2025. She serves on Arc Poetry’s editorial board and is a member of the Ottawa-based poetry collective VII. She wrote the Writers’ Union of Canada’s guidebook on the author-editor relationship. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and a publishing certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. She has won national awards for her editing, fiction, and poetry and seeks to destigmatize bipolar disorder and psychosis.