Poet and novelist Ian Williams will deliver this year’s CBC Massey Lectures series.
The lectures, as yet untitled, will be published by House of Anansi Press in October. The lectures will be broadcast on CBC Radio One’s IDEAS. Details of the 2024 Massey Lectures tour have yet to be confirmed.
The Giller-winning writer told CBC host Tom Power that he chose to focus on the theme of conversations for his lectures.
“We’re living at a point now where we can barely talk to each other, right? Like it seems incredibly urgent these days, with increasing polarization, and online forms of talking,” Williams said. “It seems really timely that we kind of step back and say, ‘Why can’t we talk to each other? How can we talk to each other? What do we need to talk about right now in 2024? And create an environmental space to make that happen.”
Williams also pointed out that an important part of having a conversation is listening.
The CBC Massey Lectures series is a partnership between CBC, House of Anansi, and Massey College at the University of Toronto. Previous Massey lecturers include Ronald J. Deibert, Tanya Talaga, Margaret Atwood, and Esi Edugyan.