The Lit Room
Wednesday April 29th, 2026 with Susan Johnston
Misha Solomon, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet (Brick Books, 2026)

On this episode of the Lit Room, host Susan Johnston sits down with Montreal poet Misha Solomon to discuss his stunning debut collection, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, published by Brick Books. The collection weaves together two timelines: an imagined portrait of Solomon's great-grandfather, a Jewish ballet dancer in pre-Holocaust Romania, and the poet's own contemporary queer life in Montreal. Part speculative history, part love story, the book moves between tenderness and humour, longing and desire, exploring what it means to search for queer ancestors in the gaps of memory and archive. Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, whose work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Arc, The Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review, and The New Quarterly, among others. He holds an MA from Concordia University and a BA from Columbia University. My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet is his first full-length collection, following two chapbooks, Full Sentences (Turret House Press, 2022) and FLORALS (above/ground press, 2020). If this conversation has you eager to hear him read in person, Misha will be launching the book at Perfect Books right here in Ottawa, from 7:00 to 8:30 PM, joined by local authors Manahil Bandukwala, Ben Ladouceur, and rob mclennan.