Black Talk

Black Talk explores the power of storytelling in shaping Black identity, featuring Nalo Hopkinson in conversation with Donna Bailey Nurse. About the Event In 2024, Textile launched Black Talk, a literary event bringing celebrated and award-winning Black authors to Waterloo Region for conversation and community engagement. Black Talk 2026 features decorated Black Canadian speculative author Nalo Hopkinson in conversation with literary and cultural critic Donna Bailey Nurse. The evening is being hosted by Carol Duncan. This year’s event leans into the power of story to create and anchor Black identity. Stories have always been important to Black people across the African Diaspora. Storytelling created a space for Black people to document their stories. Through folktales, songs, proverbs, metaphors, and so much more, Black people preserved their identities and memories for future generations to engage with. Fiction created a space for us to create ourselves. Nalo and Donna's conversation will focus on Hopkinson's most recently novel, Blackheart Man. Nalo Hopkinson will be available for book signing after the conversation (approximately 8:30pm). Books will be available for purchase courtesy of Words Worth Books. Presented in partnership with Textile, with support from: • City of Waterloo • The Musagetes Fund • Region of Waterloo • Waterloo Region Community Foundation • Words Worth Books About the Speakers Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born Canadian speculative writer and editor. Nalo is the recipient of numerous awards, including the California State University Eagle-Con 2018 Octavia Butler Memorial Award, which celebrates an author whose writing exemplifies the spirit of Butler's work, and in 2021, she was named the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, a lifetime honour from Science Fiction Writers of America. Hopkinson is the Youngest Grand Master and the first woman of African descent to receive this honour. Her novels – Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Midnight Robber (2000), The Salt Roads (2003), Blackheart Man (2024) – and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk (2001) often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. Donna Bailey Nurse is a prominent Black Canadian critic and curator. For three decades she has contributed literary articles to publications like The Walrus, The Literary Review of Canada, The Globe and Mail, Maclean's, Publishers Weekly and The Boston Globe. Donna has served as a juror for several literary awards including The Governor General's Award for non-fiction, The Writers Trust Prize for Non-Fiction and The Giller Prize. She has curated literary events for Luminato, The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Toronto Public Library and the Gardiner Museum and has interviewed dozens of literary luminaries among them Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Esi Edugyan, Chimamanda Adichie, Ben Okri, Austin Clarke and Suzette Mayr. Donna was a longtime columnist for CBC Radio's The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers. She is the author of What's A Black Critic to Do? (Vol. 1 and 2), and the editor of Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing. She has a two book deal with Harper Collins Canada for The Black Album, which is a people's history of Black Canada, as well as a memoir of her Jamaican Canadian childhood. Carol B. Duncan is a chronicler of human stories of migration, community, and identity. Her publications include scholarly books and articles, creative non-fiction, and short stories. She is a tenured full professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research focuses on Caribbean migration, gender, religion, and popular culture, as well as on Caribbean religions in diasporic and transnational contexts. She won the Region of Waterloo’s Literary Award in 2002. Carol’s short stories have been published in Augur Magazine, Tales and Feathers, FIYAH Magazine, PREE Magazine of Caribbean Writing, and Apparition Magazine. Her next short story will appear in an upcoming issue of the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies.