The Grand Finale!

Main Stage closes out the 2025 Read by the Sea literary festival on Saturday, June 21 with four of Canada’s literary greats.

Featured authors for 2025 are Toronto, Ontario poet Myna Wallin; a Canadian nomad now in Halifax Charlene Carr; Liverpool resident Vernon Oickle; and member of Norway House Cree Nation who lives in Winnipeg David A Robertson.

Watch this page for more information about this stellar line-up.

Have you read works by any of our featured authors? Recommend their poetry, prose, and creative non-fiction to other Read by the Sea enthusiasts by sending us your reader reviews. We’ll share them here as part of this year’s festival (using only your first name and your province/territory or country of residence). Submit your reviews (250-word maximum) using the Contact Us form.

Myna Wallin

Myna Wallin, a Toronto-born poet and prose writer, has been published in Antigonish Review, Vallum Magazine, Event Magazine, The Miramichi Reader, and The Literary Review of Canada, among many others. Myna has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. Wallin was longlisted for the 2022 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest. Her short fiction received an honourable mention in Esoterica Magazine’s Inaugural Fiction Contest, 2023. Myna’s first two books were A Thousand Profane Pieces and Confessions of a Reluctant Cougar (Tightrope Books, 2006, and 2010 respectively). Anatomy of An Injury, her third book, was published by Inanna Publications (2018).

“No book event has been more gratifying- than Read By The Sea, in River John in that little country in Nova Scotia where I was born.
Consider the setting. An appreciative, attentive, and inquisitive audience in lawn chairs, summer hats, and picnic baskets finding their own summer sanctuary under the warm sun, or welcome shade beneath the big leafy hardwoods, the gentle cooling breeze and salt air off the Northumberland Strait.
More than “read” by the Sea, it was live, learn, understand, marvel, rejoice, discover and celebrate by the Sea, like wind and waves upon the shore washing away so much of what sets us apart as Canadians and helping us see and hear that which brings us together.
For those of us who like to read words we’ve written, events like Read by the Sea are our greatest rewards.
We read so others can listen,. What struck me the first time I walked onto the River John grounds, several summers ago to hear a dear friend- Giller Prize winner Liz Hay, who I worked with in Yellowknife years ago- was the sound – the crystal-clear sound.
What joy to have been able to attend then. What a joy to have returned to read my own words last summer and what an even greater joy it is to know I was heard.
Thanks to all of you, especially — Ron McNutt the sound man.”

Whit Fraser
Author of True North Rising
To learn more, order now or book a reading, visit: https://whitfraser.ca
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