Nova Reads: Charles Saunders

On May 19, 2021, remembrances of the late Charles Saunders and passages from his fiction and non-fiction works will be shared by David Woods (multidisciplinary artist and arts organization leader), George Elliott Clarke (Canada’s 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate), Judy Kavanagh (editor and Saunders’s Daily News colleague), Bill Turpin (managing editor of The Daily News), Milton Davis (author of 19 books of Black fantastic fiction), and Taaq Kirksey (television producer and developer of Saunders’s Imaro novel series for screen). Hosted by journalist Jon Tattrie (author of Peace by Chocolate), this edition of Nova Reads is co-presented by Halifax Public Libraries and the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute.

This virtual event is free to attend, but pre-registration is required.REGISTER TO ATTEND

Charles Saunders (1946 – 2020) was an African-American author and journalist who moved to Ontario in 1969 and then Nova Scotia in 1985. While a copyeditor and writer at Halifax’s The Daily News, where he worked for nearly two decades, Saunders penned numerous columns grappling with difficult racial issues, contributed to The Spirit of Africville (1992), and authored the book-length community profile Black and Bluenose (1999). Saunders also pioneered the “sword and soul” literary genre through his Imaro series of fantasy novels, begun in 1981. His fiction was groundbreaking not merely for its anti-colonial reimagining of figures like Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian but also for its worldbuilding centered on Black characters and cultures.

Learn more about Charles Saunders in the feature stories “The extraordinary inner world of Charles R. Saunders, father of Black sword and soul” (Jon Tattrie, CBC Nova Scotia) and “A Black Literary Trailblazer’s Solitary Death: Charles Saunders” (The New York Times).