As mentioned before, Ayaan Hirsi Ali will be in Ottawa on June 10, as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. The event coincides with the publication of her third book, "Nomad," which is primarily a charting of her alienation from the Muslim faith she grew up in. The Globe and Mail's reviewer, Theodore Dalrymple, is, on the whole, very positive and notes that she states her case "with both modesty and great eloquence." His sole caveat is that "the Enlightenment ideal that she espouses is rather too simple as an answer to the problems of human existence."

The latest issue of Brick magazine contains a series of three essays on the passing of Allan King, the versatile Canadian filmmaker most known for his powerful documentaries on social issues such as race, poverty, domestic abuse, and death. (Here is an insightful youtube clip incorporating an interview with King and footage from some of his films. It also has Orson Welles, smoking a cigar and saying that movie directing is "the only profession in the world where you can be incompetent and go on being successful for thirty years with nobody ever discovering.")

And Prairie Fire magazine contains an interview with Austin Clarke, the author of the Giller Prize-winning The Polished Hoe, in which he discusses race, immigration, and the concept of "home."