Books and Beats is LitFest’s Saturday-night cabaret, pairing author readings with live music chosen by the writers themselves and performed by Nicholas Yee and Jyn-Ting Ying. Catalina Morales Velez hosts.

The evening moves from some of the darkest corners of today’s world toward gratitude and generosity.

Yasuko Thanh shares Pizza Before We Die, Hassan Kanafani’s vivid accounts of war and survival in Gaza. Poet and Elder Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer reads from wîhtamawik / Tell Them, essays and poems on reclaiming Cree language, land, and ways of knowing.

Zena Sharman brings Staying Power, a memoir of grief, care work, and raising three kids in a four-parent queer family. Métis author Naomi McIlwraith closes with The Great Gathering Place, a picture book about gratitude, kindness, and the places we come together.

Books and Beats, feat. Yasuko Thanh, Louise Bernice Halfe, Zena Sharman, Naomi McIlwraith