A remarkable collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada's war in Afghanistan.

Collected here are stories of battle and the more subtle engagements of this little-understood war: the tearful farewells; the shock of immersion into a culture that has been at war for thirty years; looking a suicide bomber in the eye the moment before he strikes; grappling with mortality in the Kandahar Field Hospital; and the unexpected humour that leavens life in a warzone.

Visceral, intimate and capitavating in ways no other telling could be, Outside the Wire features nearly two dozen stories by Canadians on the front lines in Afghanistan, including the previously unpublished letters home of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female NATO soldier killed in combat.

Dr. Mary Condren is a pioneer in the renaissance of Celtic Mythology. Her revolutionary work, "The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland," is a landmark in the study of world culture. In our reimagination of the world Dr. Condren suggests a way forward that acknowledges the past and embraces the new millennium. Power, sexuality and economics are forever entwined in our contemporary narrative. Join us in a celebration of life and an evening of widening rings of being. From 7:00 to 7:30, Pat Marshall will also open the evening, playing the harp.

Presented by St. Brigid's Centre for the Arts and Humanities with the support of the Writers Festival, Carleton University's College of the Humanities (Religion), and the University of Ottawa's Department of Classics and Religious Studies and Faculty of Arts.

Don't miss this first-hand account of a brutal war and the terrible ordeal of the Canadians tasked with maintaining an impossible peace. Deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a peacekeeper in 1995, Fred Doucette had a premonition that this tour of duty would be different from anything he had experienced so far. And it was: "This was the beginning of the end of the Fred I had been for forty-three years." Thousands of Sarajevans, trapped in their beloved city, perished. Billeted with a Bosnian family, Fred was offered a window into the soul of Sarajevo that few outsiders were granted. When the war ended, he returned to Canada. And another war began. Nightmares and flashbacks of violence and chaos plagued his days and nights. Traumatized by the horrors of Bosnia, Fred had to face himself, his family and his army once again. But now there was no turning away, no diversion in another foreign posting. Empty Casing is the story of the making and unmaking of a soldier, and the growth of a man.

A free event - trivia contest, great prizes!

Witty and urbane, this Unknown City book takes readers on a beguiling journey through Ottawa's past, present and future - warts and all.

"With infectious enthusiasm, unfailing clarity, and laugh-out-loud humor, Neil Shubin has created a book on paleontology, genetics, genomics, and anatomy that is almost impossible to put down. In telling the story of why we are who we are, Shubin does more than show us our inner fish; he awakens and excites the inner scientist in us all.”
—Pauline Chen, author of Final Exam

Join us for a journey into the 3.5-billion-year history of the human body. Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish and a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik—the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006—tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.