Nuclear Family: Growing up in Ottawa at the beginning of the nuclear age

Author Jean Van Loon is a life-long resident of Ottawa. Her poems, stories and reviews have appeared in literary magazines across the country, most recently in the Queen’s Quarterly and (forthcoming) The New Quarterly. She is a graduate of Carleton, Queen’s, Humber Graduate School of Writing, and UBC’s MFA program in Creative Writing.

Jean will read from her second poetry collection, Nuclear Family (McGill-Queen’s 2022), winner of the 2023 Ottawa Book Award for fiction. The book’s details of 1940s and 50s Ottawa and the role Canada played in the U.S. nuclear development program may invite discussion of other people’s memories of the time.

Jean presented her first book a few years ago at Discovery Cafe. That book (a finalist in 2019 for the same Ottawa award) was Building on River (Cormorant Books, 2018). Its evocation of the life and times of J.R. Booth, greatest of the Ottawa Valley lumber kings, provoked many audience recollections.

Admission is free and refreshments will be served. No registration is required.