Women are the foundation of our lives, our families, our society. Yet the role of matriarchs—our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers—is often sorely under-celebrated in Western culture. How can we honour the experiences of women who have gone before us, and reckon with the tapestry of love, grief, forgiveness, and hope which pierce all their lives? These three exquisite memoirs begin to answer this. Together in conversation, Sadiya Ansari (In Exile), Tessa Hulls (Feeding Ghosts), and Minelle Mahtani (May It Have a Happy Ending) will share the stories of generations of women before them; the complexity of identity in motherhood; and what these tales uncover about race, identity, and power today. Moderated by Anna Ling Kaye.
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SADIYA ANSARI is a Pakistani Canadian journalist based in London. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, VICE, Refinery29, Maclean’s, The Walrus, and the Globe and Mail, among others. She has reported from North America, Asia, and Europe, and her work has changed legislation and won awards. She is co-founder of the Canadian Journalists of Colour, a 2021 R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellow, and a 2023–24 Asper Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia.
TESSA HULLS is an artist, a writer, and an adventurer. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and Spark. She has been awarded grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the McMillen Foundation, and is the recipient of the Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. Feeding Ghosts is her first book.
ANNA LING KAYE is a writer, editor, and columnist on CBC Radio. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the PEN Canada New Voices Prize and the Journey Prize, and received the 2021 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award.
MINELLE MAHTANI is an author, scholar and former radio host. She has won several prizes for her work, including a Digital Publishing Award for an essay in The Walrus that became the basis for May It Have a Happy Ending, her debut memoir. She lives in Vancouver.
