Four renowned speakers are converging in Toronto for an evening of conversations about some of today’s most pressing social and political issues. The Alchemy Lecture will bring together thinkers and scholars on November 10 at York University for the first edition of this annual lecture series, with the theme “Borders, Human Itineraries and All Our Relation.”

The speakers, or “alchemists”, are coming from around the world and from a variety of academic disciplines, bringing a wide range of perspectives to these complex topics.

The Alchemists:

Rinaldo Walcott is a writer and professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. He will be discussing Black inheritances in his lecture, titled “Towards Another Shape of This World.”

Nadia Yala Kisukidi is a writer and associate professor in philosophy at Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis University in France, who will be speaking about borders and diasporas spatial concatenations. 

Natalie Diaz is a poet, MacArthur Foundation Fellow and Founding Director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, and her lecture is titled “A Glossary of Consequence.”

Dele Adeyemo is an Architect, Creative Director, and Urban Theorist from the UK and Nigeria. His talk is titled “Wey Dey Move: the black infra-structural life of sedimentary circulations.”

The Alchemy Lecture is part of the launch of Alchemy, a new Canadian publishing program that aims to decenter colonial models of literature and thought. Acclaimed Canadian poet, novelist and essayist Dionne Brand will lead the program as Editorial Director, guiding the publication of 2-3 carefully chosen titles each year.

Alchemy will publish both fiction and non-fiction books that reposition our thinking, explore the stakes and reckonings of today’s world, and imagine a radical future. “For me, this collaboration will foster brilliant writers doing the most brilliant thinking in fiction and non-fiction for the world to come,” said Brand, when the program was announced earlier this year.

The Alchemy books and lectures both sound like excellent sources for some much-needed deeper reflection and enriching discussions about the state of our world today. Don’t miss this thought-provoking evening.

Read more about the speakers and their lecture topics here, and register for a spot at the lecture on November 10 from 6-9pm. It will also be livestreamed on YouTube.