Lorenzo Society UNB Saint John

09/03/2026

Save the date! Our Indigenous Film Festival will take place September 22nd, 23rd, and 24th in the Ganong Hall Lecture Theatre on the UNBSJ Campus. Each screening will begin at 7 p.m. and there will be a brief discussion after.

Each year, the Indigenous Film Festival makes space to learn, reflect on, and discuss the history of colonialism in what is now known as Canada, contemporary experiences of Indigenous people across the country, and the importance of reconciliation.

After attending last year’s film festival, one student from UNBSJ’s Indigenous Health and Healing course reflected: I got the opportunity to watch the documentary Yintah, where it shows the emotional moments when community members across Canada organize blockages of railways and highways to stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en Nation. In the documentary, the blockages were a way to disrupt the world around them and force the public and the Canadian government to pay attention in hopes to reclaim their land. Watching those moments in the film, it reminded me that real change needs action and not just words. It made me reflect on my own role in reconciliation, and how I can choose to either stay silent or take small steps toward supporting Indigenous rights in meaningful ways.

We will share more about each of this year’s films, and reflections from years past, in the coming weeks! As always, admission to the film festival is free and all are welcome. 🤗

08/28/2026

We have three exciting book launches coming up this term! 🥳

On September 17th, Michelle Porter will launch her new novel A Glacier's Guide to Dying.

On October 14th, Nicholas Herring will launch his new novel Your Breath in Charcoal.

On November 18th, Margaret Sweatman will launch her new novel Night Birds alongside Jeremy Gilmer.

More details will be available soon 🗓️

In the meantime, which book are you most excited to read? 📚

08/25/2026

It’s been one week since our Fall 2026 Reading Series launch and we are still smiling! ☺️

A huge note of thanks to all who came out to see Wayne Johnston read from and chat about his new novel, The Novice of Holloway Hall. It was so lovely to see so many folks supporting the literary arts! 📚

Watch for more information on upcoming events in our Reading Series, as well as the Indigenous Film Festival in September, and musical performances throughout year!

08/20/2026

We are excited to announce the next event in the Fall 2026 Reading Series! 📚

Award-winning author Michelle Porter will join us to launch her new novel A Glacier's Guide to Dying.

A Glacier's Guide to Dying follows Robbie, a young man torn between trying to "rescue" his stubborn Métis mother and the quest to find his father, a white man often absent due to mental health challenges but now long missing in the mountains south of the border. After he and his American uncle find themselves following a very pregnant bison up the slopes of a huge glacier named Omega, Robbie must also navigate between fear and wonder as he starts hearing the ancient voice of Omega giving him guidance. Has Robbie accessed a deep connection to the land, one he can trust? Or is he succumbing to the same illness that had wreaked havoc on his father's life?

Michelle's debut novel, A Grandmother Begins the Story, won the 2024 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Her previous books include the memoir Scratching River and Approaching Fire, a work of creative nonfiction about her great-grandfather, a fiddler from the Red River, which was shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award. Michelle is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers and a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation. Michelle lives in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, where she teaches creative writing and Métis Literature at Memorial University.

More details about the event will be available soon! We hope to see you there ☺️

08/17/2026

Don’t forget! Wayne Johnston will be in Saint John tomorrow night to chat about his new novel, The Novice of Holloway Hall! 📖

The event will begin at 7 p.m. in the Hans W. Klohn Commons. Books will be available for purchase and signing. ✍️

As always, this event is free and all are welcome! We hope to see you there. ☺️

07/17/2026

The 2026/2027 academic year is fast approaching, and we are preparing for another year of highlighting some talented musicians from the Saint John area! 🎶

As part of our music series, we host noon-hour concerts on campus that bring together musicians, community members, and UNBSJ students, faculty, and staff. The performances move throughout campus, and run from 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. most Wednesdays from mid-September to early-April.

If you’re interested in being considered for the series, please send us a DM or reach out to [email protected] noting the type of music you play, what equipment you own/can access for your performance, and any additional information you think may be useful for us to know (please note: though audience members access the performances for free, all musicians are paid 🙂!)

We look forward to hearing from you! 🎶

07/09/2026

We’re busy preparing for the upcoming 2026/2027 season here at the Lorenzo Society 🥳 As we finalize our upcoming events (more soon!), we’re taking a moment to reflect on a successful 2025/2026 season!

We held 18 noon-hour concerts from September 17th to April 1st, with performances by our artist-in-residence the Saint John String Quartet (pictured), Masa Kikuchi, Sebastian Munn, Magnus LaBillois (pictured), Joseph Albert, and more! The music series runs in memory of Dr. Li-Hong Xu, who cultivated a relationship with DalMed and UNB Saint John through both the Heartbeat! Choir and the ceilidh band, Ceol.

The Society hosted seven Reading Series events and two events in our new Prof Talks series! Our literary authors included: Douglas Walbourne-Gough, Amanda Peters, Elliott Gish, Shane Neilson (pictured), Danny Jacobs, Jon Claytor (pictured), Ian Roy, and Madhur Anand; the Prof Talks Series featured Dr. Thomas Peace and Dr. Kim Nossal.

Five film screenings took place throughout the academic year, including our three-day Indigenous film festival in September, a screening of Encanto in partnership with the Department of Humanities and Languages, the Department of History and Politics, and Red Latin NB. We also partnered with Symphony New Brunswick for a screening of the original Nosferatu, with live music by the Saint John String Quartet and Andrew Reed Miller (pictured).

The 23rd edition of VOX, UNBSJ’s student art magazine, was launched to great success! Many students, parents, and community members came out to hear contributors read their work and get their copy 📖

In December, the students of ENGL 3716: Reading and Writing Community organized a pop-up exhibition inspired by the literary journal: The Cormorant. Each student selected a piece from an issue of The Cormorant that resonated with them, and created a work of original art or commentary in response. Over 100 people came out to the launch to celebrate the ongoing importance of the arts at UNBSJ.

Did you make it to one of these events? Let us know your thoughts/memories in the comments!

04/28/2026

Tonight!!! We are very much looking forward to this event — books will be available for purchase and signing 📚 We hope to see you there!

Our final Reading Series event of the term will take place next week, on April 28th, at 7 p.m. Madhur Anand will join us in the Hans W. Klohn Commons (UNBSJ library) to discuss her debut novel To Place a Rabbit! 📚

To Place A Rabbit is a witty, irresistible debut novel from award-winning poet Madhur Anand about entangled desire in books, life and love. The novel begins when the author of a popular science book attends a literary festival, where she strikes up a friendship with a charismatic novelist. This novelist's recent book is an experiment: a novella that was written in English but published only in French translation—a language the novelist herself cannot read or understand. Moreover, the novelist has lost her original manuscript of the work. The scientist, who is fluent in French, impulsively offers to re-translate the novella back into English for the novelist. But as she embarks on this task, she is haunted by memories, theories and queries—especially about a long-ago passionate affair with a French lover—that insert themselves into the translation process, troubling it, then fraying it, and finally pulling it apart at the seams. As the scientist desperately tries to complete her task before losing control of her well-organized life, both the novelist and the long-ago French lover pop up in the present day, further complicating both life and art.

Madhur Anand's debut book of creative non-fiction "This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart" (2020) won the Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Her debut collection of poems "A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes" (2015) was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and named one of 10 all-time "trailblazing" poetry collections by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Her second collection of poems "Parasitic Oscillations" (2022) was also a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and named a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. "To Place a Rabbit" (2025) is her first novel. Anand is a professor and the director of the Global Ecological Change and Sustainability Laboratory at the University of Guelph, Ontario.

As always, admission is free and light refreshment will be provided. Everyone is welcome! 🤗

04/20/2026

Our final Reading Series event of the term will take place next week, on April 28th, at 7 p.m. Madhur Anand will join us in the Hans W. Klohn Commons (UNBSJ library) to discuss her debut novel To Place a Rabbit! 📚

To Place A Rabbit is a witty, irresistible debut novel from award-winning poet Madhur Anand about entangled desire in books, life and love. The novel begins when the author of a popular science book attends a literary festival, where she strikes up a friendship with a charismatic novelist. This novelist's recent book is an experiment: a novella that was written in English but published only in French translation—a language the novelist herself cannot read or understand. Moreover, the novelist has lost her original manuscript of the work. The scientist, who is fluent in French, impulsively offers to re-translate the novella back into English for the novelist. But as she embarks on this task, she is haunted by memories, theories and queries—especially about a long-ago passionate affair with a French lover—that insert themselves into the translation process, troubling it, then fraying it, and finally pulling it apart at the seams. As the scientist desperately tries to complete her task before losing control of her well-organized life, both the novelist and the long-ago French lover pop up in the present day, further complicating both life and art.

Madhur Anand's debut book of creative non-fiction "This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart" (2020) won the Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Her debut collection of poems "A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes" (2015) was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and named one of 10 all-time "trailblazing" poetry collections by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Her second collection of poems "Parasitic Oscillations" (2022) was also a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and named a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. "To Place a Rabbit" (2025) is her first novel. Anand is a professor and the director of the Global Ecological Change and Sustainability Laboratory at the University of Guelph, Ontario.

As always, admission is free and light refreshment will be provided. Everyone is welcome! 🤗

04/14/2026

Happening tonight at Haven Music Hall!! Admission is free and all are welcome 🤗