Africville | A Family Storytime with Shauntay Grant
Saturday, February 27
2 pm EST

The Aurora Cultural Centre is pleased to offer this event at no charge, and will compensate the author for their participation. Please join us to support events like this, and consider a donation at time of event registration. Thank you.

Join author and playwright Shauntay Grant in a livestreamed reading of her children’s picture book Africville, for children ages 4 and up!

When a young girl visits the site of Africville, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the stories she’s heard from her family come to mind. She imagines what the community was once like —the brightly painted houses nestled into the hillside, the field where boys played football, the pond where all the kids went rafting, the bountiful fishing, the huge bonfires. Africville was a vibrant Black community for more than 150 years. But even though its residents paid municipal taxes, they lived without running water, sewers, paved roads and police, fire-truck and ambulance services. In the 1960s, city officials decided to demolish the community, moving people out in city dump trucks and relocating them in public housing. Today, Africville has been replaced by a park, where former residents and their families gather each summer to remember their community.

This livestream children’s book reading will be followed by a Q&A with the author – who would love to hear your comments and your questions.

Shauntay Grant is a writer and storyteller from Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). She served as the third poet laureate for Halifax Regional Municipality from 2009 to 2011. Her stage play The Bridge premiered in 2019 at Neptune Theatre and won a 2020 Robert Merritt Award for Outstanding New Play. An award-winning author of children’s literature, Shauntay’s picture book Africville with illustrator Eva Campbell won the 2019 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Awards, the 2019 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards, and the 2019 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. Shauntay is a descendant of Black Loyalists, Jamaican Maroons, and Black Refugees who came to Canada during the 18th and 19th centuries. Her love of language stretches back to her storytelling roots in Nova Scotia’s historic Black communities, and her homegrown artistic practice embraces African Nova Scotian history and folk culture, as well as contemporary approaches to literature and performance.

Copies of Africville are available through your favourite bookseller. Second Story Press (Toronto) has put together an excellent resource of Black and Indigenous-owned booksellers both in Canada and the United States. Close by, A Different Booklist (Toronto), and Knowledge Bookstore (Brampton) are good places to start. The book is also for sale through the publisher Groundwood Books.

Never attended a live stream before? It’s never been easier!

To enjoy the live stream from the comfort of your home you need access to a reliable internet connection and something to watch it on; Tablet, Laptop, Desktop Computer, Smart T.V., iPhone or Android phone will do. Patrons who have registered will receive a link to the live stream 24 hours prior to the event.  Simply click the link provided and enter the unique access code in your email and you’re set!

The Fine Print

• This is a live online event, not an in-person event.
• This free live stream ticket includes a unique access code to attend the live reading virtually at 2 pm EST on February 27.
• This event will not be recorded for future access.
• Only one live stream ticket is required per household.
• Login information will be emailed to ticket purchaser 24 hours prior to the event.