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Party of Six

Presented by Rosie Porter Realtor

With Natalie Zina Walschots, Robert de la Chevotière, Jeff Miller, Clare Goulet, Kate Cayley, Jamaluddin Aram, and K.R. Byggdin

Wednesday, November 4, 2026
7:00 pm
to 9:30 pm
Doors Open: 6:30 pm
Cafe Lara on Agricola
$10.00

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Description

Our annual midweek festival freakout at Cafe Lara features Natalie Zina Walschots, Robert de la Chevotière, Jeff Miller, Clare Goulet, Kate Caley, and Jamaluddin Aram, and hosted by K.R. Byggdin. This one always sells out, so get your ticket now! Presented by Rosie Porter Realtor.

Speakers

  • Natalie Zina Walschots is a writer and game designer. She is the author of Hench (William Morrow, 2020), a novel about the mistreated and undervalued employees of supervillains. The direct sequel, Villain (William Morrow, May 2026) continues the story of the Auditor as she fights institutionalized superheroism and goes on the exact opposite of a redemption arc. Hench was a finalist on the 2021 season of Canada Reads and was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel. Natalie is the Narrative Director at Double Rex Studios, currently at work on their debut title, Thumbsplitter. Her writing on the interactive adventure The Aluminum Cat won an IndieCade award for Innovation in Experience Design, and her work with Digital Howard as part of the social media team for the television show Wynonna Earp won Best Cross-Platform Project – Fiction at the 2017 Canadian Screen Awards. She is also the author of two books of experimental poetry: Thumbscrews, which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry; and DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and four morally bankrupt cats.

  • Robert de la Chevotière is the author of three novels. In addition to novels, he writes short stories, as well as poetry. His writing centres resistance, be it questioning systems, raising revolutions, or simply resting. He has been shortlisted for the BOCAS prize in Caribbean Literature, the Dartmouth Book award for Fiction, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Originally from the Caribbean, he resides in Halifax, where he teaches junior high school.

  • Jeff Miller is the author of the novel Temporary Palaces (Anansi) and the award-winning creative nonfiction collection Ghost Pine: All Stories True (Invisible). He holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and lives in Jeddore Oyster Pond.

  • Clare Goulet's first poetry collection, Graphis scripta: writing lichen (Gaspereau 2024) was shortlisted for the J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award and longlisted for the LCP Raymond Souster Award. Collaboration with the E. C. Smith Herbarium produced Symbiotic, an outdoor poem-trail at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. She's presented across Canada, Ireland, & the UK, and her work has been published or reviewed in The Fiddlehead, Grain, PRISM, Arc, the Malahat, Collatoral, Room, Resurgence, Poetry Canada and Lichens of Ireland & Great Britain. New book Closer, on looking, is out fall 2026. She lives in Nova Scotia.

  • Kate Cayley’s first novel, Property, is published by Coach House Books. She has also published two short story collections and three collections of poetry, and her plays have been performed in Canada, the US and the UK. She has won the Trillium Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, and the Mitchell Prize for Poetry, and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Amazon First Novel Award, and the CBC Short Story Prize. She lives in Toronto with her family.

  • JAMALUDDIN ARAM is an Afghan-Canadian writer. His short story “This Hard Easy Life” was a finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award in 2020. His debut novel, Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday, won the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Literary Fiction. He is the associate producer of the Oscar nominated film Buzkashi Boys. He lives in Toronto.

  • K.R. Byggdin is the author of Wonder World, a ReLit Award finalist and winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. They hold degrees in writing from Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph, and their short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Born and raised on the Prairies, they now reside on the East Coast.