Pandemic Bookmarks

It starts the way so many gatherings do these days: with a spinning wheel on a computer screen. Eventually the Wi‑Fi connection picks up again, the video stream resumes, and the comments section starts to fill with greetings from almost a hundred regular live viewers, checking in from Winnipeg and rural Manitoba, and as far away as Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Ottawa. The monthly Winnipeg Free Press Book Club is turning one year old.

After the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, it didn’t take long for virtual events like this to become completely normal. Tech savvy or not, almost all of us learned to use “Zoom” as a verb and to turn to video-conferencing apps for everything from work meetings to happy hours. This particular side effect of the novel coronavirus is one that Saleema Nawaz, tonight’s guest, didn’t foresee when writing her second novel. But...