Lorenzo Society UNB Saint John

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 ☺️

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. ☺️

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! 🎶

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!

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! 🤗

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! 🤗

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

Just under one week until this exciting event! Join us April 14th at Haven Music Hall for an evening of books, music, and conversation.

Join us for an evening of literature and music at Haven Music Hall, in uptown Saint John, on April 14th (7 p.m. start).📖🎶

Jon Claytor, Ian Roy and Julie Doiron have been friends and collaborators since the 1990’s (on music, art and events like Sappy Fest) and are thrilled to be out on tour together. Jon will read from his new graphic novel (Goose Lane Editions) and Ian will read from Aghast, Agast (which is the first book to be published on Gaspereau Press since it moved to New Brinswick). Julie will head line the event with 3 to 5 of her timeless songs. Expect the three performances to take about 45 to 60 minutes followed by mingling and chatting. Drop by, pick up a book, album or some Nowhere stickers and chat with the artists.

We hope to see you there! 🤗