Current Pick
A Necessary Distance: Confessions of a Scriptwriter’s Daughter
By Professor Julie Salverson
Sunday, March 29, 2026 @ 3 pm Central Time
George Salverson, although writing for the public as a CBC drama writer and editor, was a private man. He wrote over a thousand plays for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), starting in the 1940s with radio dramas then moving into television production, scripting such popular CBC series, like The Littlest Hobo and The Beachcombers. But he left no personal diaries or papers, except one set of notebooks that his daughter, Julie, discovered after his death. The notebooks were written during a round-the-world trip Salverson took in 1963, as part of a documentary investigation into world hunger which was commissioned by the Freedom From Hunger Campaign and organized by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Salverson was part of a Canadian three-man team that traveled around the Third World to film in Indonesia, India, the Serengeti, Tanzania, Ghana, Brazil and Mexico. This was early days for international travel and long before the rise of popular tourism. The culture shock Salverson experiences is palpable. The unconscious assumptions underlying his beliefs about people and society are shaken.
Julie Salverson guides the reader through a journey of discovery, shadowing both her father’s travels through foreign countries and her own tentative unearthing of her father’s private contemplations. She frames the journal entries with relevant historical references, very helpful for providing the context, as well as being informative. She shares her own reflections provoked by her father’s startling self-observations as she struggles with the implications for both her father at the time, and for herself and us today in our current society. Perhaps, as she suggests, there is ‘a necessary distance’ for one to gain perspective and insight, without condemnation, into the ‘confessions’ one makes in a private journal.
Julie Salverson’s book can be read on so many levels – for the biography of an amazingly talented man, for historical knowledge, for ethical reflection on important social issues and for sheer entertainment as a story well-told. As a bonus to our community, Julie, who is the grand-daughter of the award-winning Icelandic-Canadian author, Laura Goodman Salverson, whose only child was George, offers us intimate glimpses into the life of her famous Amma.
Author Julie Salverson
Julie Salverson is a fourth-generation Icelandic-Canadian writer, granddaughter of twice Governor General’s Award–winning author Laura Goodman Salverson, and daughter of television, radio drama, and documentary writer George Salverson. She is a writer, producer, scholar, and community animator whose work explores the artist as witness, historical memory, ethics, and the imagination. Salverson is Associate Professor of Drama at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario) and Adjunct Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.
Before joining Queen’s, she worked for several decades in Canadian theatre and founded two theatre companies: Second Look Community Arts Resource and Flying Blind Theatre Events. Her community-engaged projects with survivors of violence led her to graduate study, and she completed her PhD in 2000. Selected stage works include Boom (a clown play about landmines); Beyond the End of Your Nose (with Patricia Henderson); Thumbelina; The Haunting of Sophie Scholl; The Pied Piper Returns; and the opera Shelter (about nuclear fallout). Her work has been performed across Canada, the United States, and internationally, and she also leads drama-based workshops on resilience support.
Selected publications include Words That Sing: 7 Canadian Libretti (editor and librettist, Playwrights Canada Press, 2022); “Sounding Out the Nuclear: An Atomic Opera—Contestations of Nuclear Power” (with Peter C. van Wyck and Juliet Palmer, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020); “Shameless Acts of Foolish Witness,” in Comedy Begins with Our Simplest Gestures: Levinas, Ethics, and Humour, edited by Brian Bergen-Aurand (Duquesne University Press, 2017); Lines of Flight: An Atomic Memoir (Wolsak & Wynn, 2016); “Theatre Beyond Culture Wars” (Research in Drama Education, 2023); and A Necessary Distance: Confessions of a Scriptwriter’s Daughter (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024).
ABOUT INLNA READS
Icelandic heritage and literature go hand-in-hand, with some of the highest literacy rates, Iceland also has an impressive publication rate. The history dates back to 13th century Sagas, the narrative history of the Vikings and early Icelandic settlement, written by Snorri Sturluson.
The Reads Program works to highlight both historical and contemporary works by Icelandic authors though coordinated nationwide book clubs. Reading is a beloved pastime in Iceland and books are popular Christmas gifts. So much so, that Jólabókaflóð, or “Christmas Book Flood” has become a tradition. An official Jólabókaflóð catalog, the Bókatíðindi, or "Book Bulletin," listing out popular books and new releases, is sent to every house in Iceland in November.
A book selection is announced annually in early September, and materials distributed to local clubs for promotion. Clubs may choose to incorporate the Jólabókaflóð tradition and encourage Christmas giving, or use this tradition to help promote the book club to the community. Book club meetings are public and run January through April, but schedules will vary by location based on the sponsoring local club or individual.
2026 INLNA READS PICKS
2025 INLNA Reads Picks
2024 INLNA READS PICKS
SARAH TOLMIE’S ALL THE HORSES OF ICELAND
SUNDAY, March 3, 2024
Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more. All the Horses of Iceland is a delve into the secret, imagined history of Iceland's unusual horses, brought to life by an expert storyteller. (Macmillan)
The Seal Woman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson
SUNDAY, JANUARY 21, 2024
INLNA READS kicks off 2024 with Sally Magnusson’s, The Sealwoman’s Gift, a story of tragedy and courage, loss and hope. This fictional story of Ásta, a pastor’s wife kidnapped from the Westman Islands in Iceland by Barbary pirates and enslaved in northern Algiers, is based on true historical events that happened in 1627. Ásta loses her home, her children, her community and her freedom. This is the story of how she survives through never losing what she carried in her heart and soul: the sagas and folklore of her northern land. Magnusson shows us how ‘the eternal power of story-telling’ strengthens our spirit. This is an inspirational novel for all. This month's feature INLNA club is the ICC of BC, who will guide our discussion. Come out to hear two ICC of BC members talk of their discovery of ancestors who were survivors of the Barbary pirate raid.
2023 INLNA READS PICKS
2022 INLNA READS PICKS
2021 INLNA READS PICKS
For spring 2021, the INLNA Reads selection is the novel Burial Rites written by Hannah Kent. The book is inspired by the true crime story of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman to be publically beheaded in Iceland. Set in the early 19th century on an isolated farm in Northern Iceland, we meet Agnes when she is sent to await execution for the murder of her former master.
Meeting were held February 28, March 28, and April 25, 2021, along with a special event on May 16 where Hildur Rúriks of Wisconsin invited two special guests, Maria Ellingsen and Magnus Ólafsson to join to discuss their experiences with the story.
2019 INLNA READS! PROGRAM BOOK CHOICE: 'INDEPENDENT PEOPLE'
by Halldór Laxness
Penguin Books: A huge, humane revelation of a novel is set in rural Iceland in the early twentieth century, written by the Nobel prize-winner dubbed the 'Tolstoy of the North'. A magnificent portrait of the eerie Icelandic landscape and a man's dogged struggle for independence. Bjartus is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor the First World War, nor his family will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. As she grows up, keen to make her own way in the world, Bjartus' obstinacy threatens to estrange them forever.
New York Review of Books wrote: 'There are good books and there are great books and there may be a book that is something still more: it is the book of your life.'
Download the flyer here: Book Club Flyer 2019 Independent People.pdf
2018 INLNA READS! PROGRAM BOOK CHOICE: 'ON THE COLD COASTS'
by Vilborg Davidsdottir (Author), Alda Sigmundsdottir (Translator)
When a fleet of one hundred English ships is caught in a horrible storm off the cold coasts of fifteenth-century Iceland, twenty-five ships are lost. For Ragna, the daughter of a respected family and betrothed to Thorkell, her relationship with one of the seamen washed ashore results in pregnancy. Now barren due to a traumatic childbirth and stigmatized as a fallen woman, she is left with no prospects for marriage when the betrothal is ultimately canceled.
A decade later, Ragna becomes a housekeeper to the new English bishop in North Iceland, where passionate and ambitious Thorkell is a priest and steward. They embark on a fervent but doomed love affair as priests cannot marry and Ragna will not be a concubine. Little does Ragna know but her host, the bishop, is instigating the conflict between the English and Nordic settlers to his own gain, with a devastating impact on his housekeeper. As sweeping as it is intimate, On the Cold Coasts is a powerful, enduring story of love and personal sacrifice.
The World of On the Cold Coasts: The scene is 15th century Iceland. The country, as well as all of Scandinavia, is ruled by a single monarch, King Eric, who resides in Denmark. The king’s archbishop, whose seat is in Nidaros, Norway, has authority over the Icelandic church. The Nordic countries are united in the so-called Kalmar Union, and only merchants from within the Union are permitted to trade with Iceland. Yet not many venture to make the journey from Scandinavia to this distant island in the North Atlantic. Not so the English. Ignoring King Eric’s embargo, about 100 ships sail from England to Iceland each summer, seeking out the abundant fishing grounds. They also trade English flour, ale, wine, boots and other commodities for Icelandic stock fish, woolen cloth and sulphur, which is used for gunpowder in England’s ongoing war with the French. To strengthen their interests, the English persuade the Pope in Rome, the highest authority of the church, to appoint an English bishop in Iceland, to assist in them in trade and other dealings with the natives.
Earlier Selections
2017: “Ivory Vikings” by Nancy Marie Brown
2015: “Saga of Gudrid The Far-Traveler” by Nancy Marie Brown
2013: “The Young Icelander” by Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason
2012: “Independent People” by Halldór Laxness