To wrap up our first season, Bookends is bringing you to the Festival of Literary Diversity in Brampton. Tanya Talaga, Morgan Campell and Amal Elsana Alh'jooj may be memoir writers from different walks of life — but a common thread in their work is how they continually use their voices to negotiate challenging conversations. They recently joined Mattea Roach on stage for a live panel, where they spoke about the value of difficult conversations … and how telling personal stories creates empathy at large.

Hear the rest of our interview with Tanya Talaga here:

• Tanya Talaga: Searching for her great-great grandmother — a story of family, truth and survival

For Montreal writer Chris Bergeron, the power of transgender storytelling is revolutionary. Her novel Valid is about a 70-year-old trans woman who is forced back into the closet to survive in a dystopian Montreal. Valid, translated from French by Natalia Hero, was chosen for this year’s One eRead Canada campaign. Chris sat down with Mattea Roach at a live virtual event in April. They spoke about the relationship between transness and technology, the meaning of “dystopian autofiction” and how the city of Montreal is always in transition.

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:

• Helen Phillips: In a world run by AI, what makes us human?
• Judith Butler: Breaking down why people fear gender

For Chyana Marie Sage, being “soft as bones” means accepting that humans are both strong and fragile — and have immense capacity for healing. Her new memoir, Soft As Bones, is her quest to better understand the childhood trauma that scarred her family. It's also a tapestry of poetry, history, Cree language, traditional ceremony and folklore — and delves into her experiences and those of her family with compassion and strength. Chyana joins Mattea Roach to share the catharsis she felt from writing about painful memories and the care she took to portray everyone with empathy.

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:

• Tanya Talaga: Searching for her great-great grandmother — a story of family, truth and survival
• Teresa Wong: Illustrating her family's past — in all its ordinary and epic moments