Chris Banks & Tanis MacDonald, with the cover images of their new books, Bureau of Useless Splendour and Tall, Grass, Girl, respectively.
Chris Banks and Tanis MacDonald visit KPL to discuss their latest poetry collections, in conversation with Emily Urquhart.
In Bureau of Useless Splendour, Chris Banks explores what is wondrous and strange about human connection, pop culture, and the elusive search for understanding and hope in an accelerating century.
Tanis MacDonald’s Tall, Grass, Girl examines life between belonging and non-belonging, victimhood and bold survivorship. Unflinching and unapologetic, her work traces a journey through adoption and assault toward escape, resilience, and ultimately, hard-won survivor joy.
About the Authors
CHRIS BANKS is a Pushcart-nominated Canadian poet with eight collections of poems. He has won two national awards, and his poems have appeared across Canada and the United States. Banks runs The Woodlot, a Canadian poetry reviews and essays website. He lives and writes in Kitchener, ON.
TANIS MACDONALD is the author of seven works of nonfiction and poetry, including Mobile, which was longlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award. She is a two-time recipient of the Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards for Creative Nonfiction and has also won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Teaching Creative Writing. She is the co-editor of the anthology GUSH: Menstrual Manifestos for our Times (with Ariel Gordon and Rosanna Deerchild). Originally from Treaty 1 territory/Winnipeg, she now lives near O:se Kenhionhata:tie (Willow River) in the southwestern Ontario watershed region.
About the Moderator
EMILY URQUHART holds a PhD in folklore and is a professor of creative writing at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has won two National Magazine Awards. She is also a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly.
Tickets for this free event go on sale Sep 17, 2026, 12:00 PM. CLICK HERE for information.