Community event

Our next book club meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 15th.

Our book club is unique. Please read the following:

• Each participant will bring a locally authored or published novel they have recently read and can part with. Locally authored will be defined as an author living within the Atlantic Bubble.
• During the meeting, each person will take a turn telling everyone what they liked about the book they brought and why the others should read it.
• Each book will go into a basket, and at the end of the meeting, if a book sparked your interest, you’ll be able to take it home to read.
• If there is more than one person interested in reading the book, it will be brought back to the next meeting for another person’s turn.
• We may even host an author occasionally, and Dartmouth Book Exchange may even seed the basket once in a while.
• All are welcome to come and listen during the meetings, but only the people who brought a book will be guaranteed to leave with a book.

Our Book Club aims to promote local authors, their books, and the writing of reviews. #supportlocalauthors

Come join our Autumn Book Swap, where you can meet other book lovers and exchange your gently used books for the ones they bring!

While this event is free to all, we ask you to consider buying a drink (or perhaps a new book!) from our bookstore’s cafe.

Local Dartmouth author Amy Spurway has one of the best first lines in her novels, maybe even the best first paragraph. For our Speed Dating event, Blind Date books use their first line(s) as their “pick-up” lines, so Amy will be here to tell us all about first lines: how she came up with her first line and their importance. She’ll also discuss her novel Crow, winner of the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Fiction. There will be games and lots of laughter. Everyone gets one of these, never seen before, specially made, high-demand Blind Dates. Dress to impress. This is an adult event

A $10.50 fee: pre-registration is required for this event to monitor numbers. You can either register at the store, or by phone with a credit card at 902-435-1207, or by etransfer at dbex1187@gmail.com.

The format of the night will be as follows:

• Participants will be given 30 seconds to flip over the Blind Date in front of them, read the Blind Date’s pick-up line, and decide if they are interested and would like to take that date home with them. If they are interested, they take it back with them to their seat, and a new Blind Date with a Book replaces the one removed.
• If they are not interested in that particular date, they just flip it back over, for the next person in line, and return to the end of the line.
• This will continue until all participants have chosen their date for the night.
• Once everyone has picked their date, they can then unwrap them if they wish. We encourage people to wait until everyone has selected their date before unwrapping. Pictures of the lucky matches will be encouraged.

Come share your works in progress with fellow writers in a safe and welcoming space.

Feel free to come by for a drink and to just listen to other writer’s works, too.

Each reader is allotted up to 7-10 minutes of reading time, depending on turnout.

Once a year, in wild, beautiful Unama’ki (Cape Breton), writers and readers come together and experience the magic power of stories to connect us and create community.

The 2025 Cabot Trail Writers Festival includes authors Madeleine Thien, Eliza Reid, Zilla Jones, Tom Ryan, Ian Williams, Mona Knight, David A. Robertson, Sue Goyette, and Ivan Coyote. See the full schedule at https://www.cabottrailwritersfestival.com/, and purchase tickets of individual events at the link above.

If you’ve ever looked to guides to get your writing on track, you’ve likely notices how many there are out there. Where to start? Janet Kitto will give an overview of what is out there and who does what well. Participants are encouraged to bring along their own recommendations and share what they found useful. For more information and to register, please call the Trenton Library at (902) 752-5181 or email,trenton@parl.ns.ca.

We’d like to invite you to Word on the Hill, Nimbus Publishing’s annual book block party, on Saturday, September 27th from 10am–3pm! Join us on Strawberry Hill Street for author readings and signings, kids’ activities, and a book sale! Come hang out with Nimbus and with some other fantastic Atlantic publishers and members of the book community.

Stay tuned to Nimbus’ social media (@nimbuspub) for more information and to find out which authors will be joining us to make this year extra special! We can’t wait to see you on the hill!

BMO Room

Join host Gillian Turnbull, Director of Writing & Publishing at the University of King’s College, in conversation with James MacDuff, author of The Illogical Adventure.

The Illogical Adventure recounts the story of an unlikely cross-continental romance between two independent-minded travellers – from their brief but fateful first meeting in Cape Town, through to a dowry ceremony in rural Africa a few years later during the Covid pandemic and beyond.