Program Description
Event Details
One eRead Canada is a digital book club connecting readers and libraries from across Canada.
This year’s One eRead Canada pick is Valid by Chris Bergeron, with the English version translated by Natalia Hero.
The author, Chris Bergeron, will sit down with host Mattea Roach (CBC radio host of Bookends and Jeopardy! superstar) to discuss their book.
Register for this event through Ottawa Public Library by clicking the following link: https://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/one-eread-canada-2025-valid-chris-bergeron
About Valid: Set in a disturbingly transfigured Montreal in the year 2050, Valid is a monologue delivered over the span of eight hours by Christelle, a seventy-year-old trans woman forced to live as a man in order to survive. Speaking to her captor, an ever–more powerful AI, she turns the tables and mounts her own revolution by showing her truest self. Part autofiction, part dystopic speculation on an all-too-possible future characterized by corporate power, ecological collapse, and political havoc, Valid is an ambitious work that is as much philosophical as it is confessional.
Chris Bergeron is diverse and fluid: after beginning a career in journalism and eventually winding up at the helm of the weekly cultural magazine Voir, she now dedicates her artistic vitality to Cossette, a leading global marketing agency. She offers speaking engagements on leadership, diversity, inclusion, and trans rights. Chris lives in Montreal.
Mattea Roach is the host of Bookends, an author interview show airing on CBC Radio and major podcasting platforms. They previously hosted The Backbench, a federal politics panel show, for Canadaland. Prior to becoming a journalist, Mattea appeared on the game show Jeopardy!, winning 23 consecutive games at age 23 and becoming the most successful Canadian contestant to ever appear on the program.