Linda Leith Publishing Showcase
Located in the Rotunda, Casa d’Italia
With:
- Toula Drimonis
- Alex Costa
- Don Macdonald
- Rebecca Morris
- Michael Foy
- Oren Safdie
- Janet Torge
- David Homel
- Natalie Southworth
Moderated by Linda Leith
Linda Leith Publishing will present their local authors of the season, along with some recent stars. Short readings from a variety of genres will be followed by mingling and book signing.
Alex Costa has degrees in biology and dentistry from McGill University. Born and raised in the neighbourhood of North Toronto, she grew up near the ravines that inspired this story. She now lives in Montreal with her husband Mark, also a dentist, her two sons, and a big shaggy dog named Rookie who has excellent teeth. The first in a planned trilogy, The Roughling is her first novel. www.alexcosta.ca
The author of the 2022 bestseller We, the Others, Toula Drimonis is a Montreal-based opinion columnist, writer and news producer. A former news director for TC Media, she has reported and written on politics, social justice, and women’s issues for national and international publications. She has worked in television, radio, and print in all three of her languages, and has appeared on TV as both panelist and contributor to English and French-language current-affairs and cultural news shows.
Michael Foy was born and raised in Surrey, British Columbia. He holds degrees in psychology and education from Simon Fraser University. His fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine, The Nashwaak Review, QWERTY, Literally Stories, Blank Spaces, Canadian Shorts II, and other journals and anthologies. His story “The Questions Run” received an Honourable Mention in the Riddle Fence Fiction Contest. He lives in Montreal with his wife and two daughters. www.michaelfoy.ca
David Homel was born in Chicago in 1952 and left the city in 1970 for Paris, living in Europe the next few years on odd jobs. He has published ten novels, from Electrical Storms (1988) to The Teardown, which won the Paragraph Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2019, and most recently, Private Number (2025). He has also written young adult fiction with Marie-Louise Gay, directed documentary films, worked in TV production, been a literary translator, journalist, and creative writing teacher. He has translated four books for Linda Leith Publishing: Bitter Rose (2015), The Last Bullet Is For You (2016), Nan Goldin: The Warrior Medusa (2017) and Taximan (2018). Lunging into the Underbrush (2021), also with LLP, was his first book of non-fiction. He lives in Montreal.
Don Macdonald worked for over 20 years as a journalist in Winnipeg, Montreal and Quebec City. His first novel, Omand’s Creek, was an Amazon bestseller that the Montreal Gazette praised as “the best Canadian crime debut in recent memory.” He lives in Montreal. www.donmacdonald.ca
Originally from Guelph, Rebecca Morris lives in Montreal. She earned an M.A. in French from Dalhousie, had three children in three years and taught high school before turning to writing full time. Rebecca’s short stories have won several awards, including the Malahat Review Open Season Award and the Humber Literary Review Emerging Writers Fiction contest. She is a Banff Centre alumna, recipient of a Canada Council Arts grant and an active member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, where she has taught workshops on short fiction and narrative structure. Other Maps is her first novel.
Oren Safdie was born in Montreal where he attended St George’s School and Marianopolis College. Following graduate studies in Architecture and Creative Writing at Columbia University, Oren has worked as a playwright, screenwriter, and professor of Dramatic Writing & Literature. Five of his plays were New York Times Critic’s Picks. Beyond Ken Dryden, which is his first book, was produced as a play in Montreal in 2024 and Toronto in 2025. He divides his time between LA and Montreal.
Natalie Southworth’s award-winning stories have appeared in literary journals in Canada, the UK and the US, including The North American Review, The Moth Magazine, The New Quarterly, Canadian Notes & Queries, The Brooklyn Review and more. She lives in Montreal.
Janet Torge lives in Montreal and is always looking for new adventures. She’s been a television documentary producer, a prenatal teacher and Birth Doula, an overnight talk-show host at CFCF Radio, traffic reporter and Radio Noon host at CBC Montreal, a columnist at the Montreal Gazette, and co-founder of the first rape relief centre in Canada. She recently trained as a Death Doula and is also the author of Dear Sam, a book about the death of her son.