Join us on Monday, September 14 at the Royal Ontario Museum, for an evening with the 2026 Weston International Award winner, hosted by Ali Hassan of CBC’s Canada Reads.

Hanif Abdurraqib is an American memoirist and poet known for his distinctive style of cultural and artistic criticism through the lens of music, sport, and contemporary American issues. In a creative and wide-ranging talk, he will bring his unique and rare intellect to the role of nonfiction in our society, and his relationship to it as someone from an unconventional background. He’ll then sit down for wide-ranging and free-wheeling conversation with a member of the award jury and author Tessa McWatt.

Jurors said his “work sings and stings and brings truths, both personal and communal, as he voices culture and its complexities with bold, compassionate lyricism and a real sense of love,” and that is what he will bring to the stage.

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