Deborah Dundas at Ottawa Writers Fest
Join Deborah Dundas (On Class) at Ottawa Writers Fest! Deborah will be in conversation with Catherine McKenney, co-founder of the non-profit CitySHAPES. The event will take place on Friday, May 3 at 6PM ET.
PLEASE NOTE: For the safety and comfort of all patrons, masks are required to attend in person. Ticket holders unable to join us in person can request a livestream link.
More details and tickets here.
Order your copy of On Class here!
Deborah Dundas is a journalist who grew up poor and almost didn’t make it to university. In On Class, she talks to writers, activists, those who work with the poor and those who are poor about what happens when we don’t talk about poverty or class—and what will happen when we do.
Stories about poor people are rarely written by the poor—and when they are written they tend to fit into a hero narrative. Through hard work, smarts, and temerity, the hero pulls themselves up by their bootstraps in a narrative that simply provides an easy exception: look, we don’t have to give you more, you just have to work harder. On Class is an exploration of the ways we talk about class: of who tells the stories and who doesn’t, and why that has to change. It asks the question: What don’t we talk about when we don’t talk about class? We don’t talk about luck, or privilege, or entitlement. We don’t talk about the trauma that goes along with being poor.
Deborah Dundas grew up poor in the west end of Toronto. She is now a writer and journalist, has worked as a television producer and is currently an editor at the Toronto Star. Her work has appeared in numerous publications in Canada, the UK and Ireland including Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Canadian Notes and Queries, The Belfast Telegraph and The Sunday Independent. She attended York University for English and Political Science and has an MFA in Creative Non-fiction from the University of King’s College. She lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter and their loving, grumpy cat Jumper.
