Edmonton Comes to Calgary: Leslie Greentree

Edmonton Comes to Calgary Leslie Greentree in conversation with Julie Sedivy In the spirit of deepening the literary connections between Alberta’s two major cities, this edition of our reading series showcases the work of Edmonton-based Leslie Greentree, a writer who is brave enough to turn a floodlight onto the aspects of our souls we’d often prefer to keep in the dark. Join us for a reading and in-depth conversation in which we’ll explore how dark humour, brutal honesty, and emotional excavation are the essential tools in her writer’s toolkit. AUTHOR BIO Leslie Greentree’s most recent short story collection, Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For, was shortlisted for a 2023 High Plains Book Award. An earlier short story collection, A Minor Planet for You, won the 2007 Howard O’Hagan Prize for Short Fiction. She is also the author of two poetry books: go-go dancing for Elvis, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and guys named Bill. Leslie is also an occasional essayist; her new essay, “Furniture Broken by Boys,” was recently shortlisted for the 2026 Jon Whyte Memorial Essay award, and previous essays have been shortlisted for Writers Guild of Alberta and the Humber Creative Nonfiction Collective awards. Leslie’s work has won CBC literary competitions for short fiction and poetry, and a Sarah Selecky Little Bird short fiction competition. She co-wrote the play Oral Fixations with her husband Blaine Newton; it was professionally produced in 2014. She has also had an art show hung in an Alberta gallery, a series of photograph groupings with accompanying text. Leslie lives in Edmonton. CONVERSATION PARTNER BIO Julie Sedivy is a writer and linguist whose work straddles scientific and literary worlds. Her book Memory Speaks (Harvard University Press) was shortlisted for two Alberta Literary Awards and was named by The Economist as one of the top five books about language in a “golden age” of language writing. Her most recent book, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), won the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and was a finalist for the Alberta Memoir Award. Linguaphile was listed as a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker and Kirkus. She served as the 2025 Author in Residence at the Calgary Public Library.