Intemperance:
Sonora Jha in conversation with Minelle Mahtani
Thursday, July 16th, 2026
Waterfront Theatre
1412 Cartwright St
Vancouver
BC V6H 3R7
Doors: 5:30pm
Show: 6:00pm
+ post-show book signing
Accessibility Information:
For information about seating, parking, washrooms, and other accessibility information see Waterfront Theatre Accessibility Page
Acclaimed novelist, professor and essayist Sonora Jha brings her electrifying new novel Intemperance to the Indian Summer Festival!
A bold, unflinching exploration of race, power, desire, and the uneasy moral terrain of liberal institutions: not to mention the challenges facing South Asian menopausal women who work within them. Through searing prose and psychological intensity, Intemperance pulls readers into a world where ambition, complicity, and resistance collide in unsettling and deeply revealing ways.
In conversation with Minelle Mahtani, author of the award-winning memoir May It Have a Happy Ending, Jha will delve into the novel’s provocations and its urgent questions. Expect a lively, incisive exchange that moves well beyond the page. Stick around after the talk to purchase books to be signed by the authors from our official book seller, Iron Dog Books.
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about the artists
sonora jha
Sonora Jha is the author of four books, the latest of which is the novel Intemperance, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and hailed as a Best Book of 2025 by Library Journal, the LA Public Library, Book Page, Ms. Magazine, and others. Her 2023 novel The Laughter, won the 2024 Washington Book Award and the AutHer Award, was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New Yorker, NPR, and others. She is also the author of the memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son. Formerly a journalist in India and Singapore, she is now a Loyola Endowed Professor at Seattle University. Her debut novel Foreign, published in India in 2013, is forthcoming from Harper Via in the U.S. in October 2026.
MINELLE MAHTANI
Minelle Mahtani is a Muslim Iranian/Indian/Canadian writer, former TV producer and radio host. She is Chair of Canadian Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her memoir, May It Have a Happy Ending, has been called a “magnificent and stunning debut.” It won the Hubert Evans Prize for best non-fiction of the year. She has been nominated for two national magazine awards and won a gold medal for best personal essay in the Digital Publishing Awards. Mahtani is the author of the book Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality. Her work has appeared in The Walrus, Geist, Maisonneuve and Southeast Review. She is currently working on a book about erosion with UBC Press.