The Grand Finale!
Main Stage closes out the 2024 Read by the Sea literary festival on Saturday, July 6 with four of Canada’s literary greats.
Featured authors for 2024 are Newfoundland and Labrador poet Mary Dalton; Halifax-raised Toronto author Mai Nguyen; hockey dad, coach and teacher Karl Subban; and “the dean of Canadian science fiction” Robert J. Sawyer.
Watch this page for more information about this stellar line-up.
Have you read works by any of our featured authors? Recommend their poetry, prose, and creative non-fiction to other Read by the Sea enthusiasts by sending us your reader reviews. We’ll share them here as part of this year’s festival (using only your first name and your province/territory or country of residence). Submit your reviews (250-word maximum) using the Contact Us form.
Mary Dalton
Professor Emerita of English at Memorial University, Mary Dalton is author of five books of poetry, among them Merrybegot, Red Ledger, and Hooking, and a prose miscellany, Edge: Essays, Reviews, Interviews. The book version of her 2020 Pratt Lecture, The Vernacular Strain in Newfoundland Poetry, was released by Breakwater in 2022. Her sixth poetry collection, Interrobang, is forthcoming in the fall of 2024. Dalton’s poems, reviews, essays and interviews have been published in journals and anthologies in Canada, Ireland, the United States, and Belgium. She was Poet Laureate of the City of St. John’s from 2019 to 2023. Dalton's poetry has received various awards. Merrybegot won the 2005 E. J. Pratt Poetry Award, the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted also for the 2004 all-genre Winterset Award, the 2004 Pat Lowther Memorial Poetry Award, and the 2005 Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage and History Award. She lives in St. John’s.
Mai Nguyen
Mai Nguyen is the author of Sunshine Nails (Atria Books and Simon & Schuster Canada). Her non-fiction writing has appeared in Wired, Washington Post, Marie Claire, Macleans, Toronto Star and more. She has been nominated for a National Magazine Award twice and holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Toronto Metropolitan University. Born in Winnipeg and raised in Halifax, Mai currently lives in Toronto. Sunshine Nails is her debut novel.
Karl Subban
Karl Subban has been a coach, a teacher, a principal and a parent for more than thirty years. Hailing from Jamaica, Subban didn't play hockey until he moved to Canada as a child. He raised three NHL players, including the New Jersey Devils defenceman P.K. Subban — an Olympic gold medalist and one of the league's brightest stars — and Malcolm Subban, a goaltender with the Chicago Blackhawks. Karl Subban is the author of the instant national bestseller How We Did It: The Subban Plan for Success in Hockey, School and Life, a must-read account of one of the sport's most fascinating families.
Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer — “the dean of Canadian science fiction,” according to both the CBC and The Ottawa Citizen — is the only Canadian to have won all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel the year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He has also won more Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”) than anyone else in history, and he was a guest of honour at the 2023 World Science Fiction Convention (the Worldcon). A member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario, Rob’s 25 bestselling novels include Quantum Night (long-listed for Canada Reads), FlashForward (basis for the ABC TV series), and his latest, The Downloaded. Website: sfwriter.com.
Pasha Malla
PASHA MALLA is the author of five works of poetry and fiction, including the story collection The Withdrawal Method and the novel People Park. His fiction has won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Trillium Book Prize, an Arthur Ellis Award and several National Magazine awards. His work has also been long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Pasha’s latest novel, Kill the Mall, was released in February 2021.
Stephen Maher
The Writers Workshop "Fiction Thrillers" will be led by Stephen Maher, a journalist and novelist originally from Truro, Nova Scotia. Steve is an interviewer for the 2021 MainStage. An award-winning investigative journalist and political columnist, he is the author of three novels, Deadline, Salvage and Social Misconduct. He makes his home on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.
Suzanne Stewart
Suzanne Stewart’s writing has appeared in The Dalhousie Review, The Goose, The Globe and Mail, Saltscapes Magazine, The Antigonish Review, English Studies, Essays on Canadian Writing, The Craft Factor, and Newest Review. She has published a creative non-fiction book, The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (Pottersfield 2018). Having completed an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and a PhD in English literature, Suzanne currently teaches at St. Francis Xavier University. Read by the Sea welcomes Suzanne as a MainStage interviewer.
Lana MacEachern
Lana MacEachern is a library technician and former journalist/columnist whose work has appeared in Nova Scotian daily and weekly newspapers and The Seniors' Advocate. A longtime Read by the Sea fan and frequent festival interviewer, she is now a member of the festival's organizing committee. Lana writes poetry and creative non-fiction and is working up the courage to submit her work to literary journals. She lives on Nova Scotia's Northumberland shore.
“River John, on Nova Scotia’s lovely north shore, is the perfect setting for Read by the Sea. It’s a jewel of a festival bringing together wonderful writers and welcoming readers for a celebration of the written word. I’d go back in a heartbeat.”
Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour