BookFest/Festival du livre will take a virtual approach this year to bringing an outstanding line-up of Canadian authors to the public October 15 to 18, entirely free of charge.

The festival, in its 19^th year, will deliver a varied and full slate of diverse voices from BIPOC and LGBTQ2S+ authors, fiction and non-fiction perspectives -- highlighted each year by the Poetry Café. This year’s Saturday evening spotlight event will feature Desmond Cole, bestselling author of, The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power.

Also featured this year are Shanti Mootoo, recently long-listed for the Giller Prize for her fifth novel, Polar Vortex; Stephen Heighton, one of five recently announced finalists for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction; Cree/Dene author, musician, and broadcaster Carol Rose GoldenEagle; David Ly, whose poetry explores identity, homophobia, and anti-Asian racism; and Hana Shafi, writer and artist internationally known for her empowering illustrations under the alias Frizz Kid.

As well, BookFest/Festival du livre remains committed to francophone literature. On Friday evening, Mireille Messier, Andrée Poulin and Sonia-Sophie Courdeau will present their latest works.

The festival also includes such home-grown talent as Madeline Sonik, originally from Windsor, whose new short story collection, Fontainebleau, is based loosely on her old east Windsor neighbourhood; fiction writer Kristyn Dunnion, originally from Kingsville; and poets Laurie Smith, Dorothy Mahoney, Daniel Lockhart, and Samantha Badaoa.

Registration is required to access all sessions and can be found at www.bookfestwindsor.com.

A forum Friday will bring together interested academics to determine objectives and guidelines for focusing research, technical training, curriculum development, lab orientation, and funding applications on solving economic and social mobility challenges in Windsor-Essex.

Running from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 16, it will be the inaugural event for the Windsor-Essex Automobility Cluster: Academic Partnership Initiative, a collaboration among the University of Windsor, St. Clair College, and the Windsor Essex Economic Development Corporation.

The forum will explore how to:

• Leverage local businesses for research opportunities;
• Foster an entrepreneurial ecosystem;
• Align research incentives for bi-national collaborations; and,
• Build a venue that promotes the region as a living mobility lab.

Highlights will include a discussion of “Collaboration and a Vision” by panellists Heather Pratt of the University of Windsor, Peter Wawrow of St. Clair College, Susan Anzolin of the Institute for Border Logistics and Security, and Shawna Boakes, a traffic engineer for the City of Windsor. The event will be conducted over the videoconferencing platform Microsoft Teams.

Find details including a registration link on the forum website. 

Looking for a new piece of software and not sure where to start? Company Portal may be the answer.

Company Portal is available for UWindsor faculty and staff who are using Windows 10 on a centrally managed device. It provides safe and secure access to software licensed under campus agreements.

Watch IT Services team member Jonathan North as he demonstrates how to install software using Company Portal in this 89-second Tech Talk video.

If you want more information about UWindsor software entitlements and distribution, click on the links in the Comments section below the video. 

Tech Talk is a presentation of IT Services. More Tech Talks are available at www.uwindsor.ca/its/tech-talk.