
Wordfest presents Scaachi Koul
Hosted by Shelley Youngblut
Wordfest welcomes back best-selling culture writer (and Calgary's own) Scaachi Koul with her book of essays: Sucker Punch. From the cultural critic and bestselling author of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter comes a poignant, bitingly funny, and unabashedly candid new memoir that was named by Vulture and Literary Hub as one of 2025's Most Anticipated Releases. The bracing conversation, hosted by Wordfest’s CEO and Creative Ringleader Shelley Youngblut, includes an audience Q & A and book signing. You can pre-order Sucker Punch here through Shelf Life Books, who will also be at the event with copies of Koul's first book. Raves The New York Times, "Koul puts on a breezy and fleetingly filthy sideshow, but when she writes about gender and race she reveals that knife-throwing is her main act."
We are grateful to Penguin Random House Canada for making it possible to connect you with Scaachi Koul.
About Sucker Punch
“Sucker Punch is a generous and gutting book about marriage and mothers and the inheritances we all carry. Scaachi Koul’s genius here is stacking moments where you’ll burst out laughing, then pulling her own sucker punch: just when your heart is open, she sneaks in a turn that will make you weep. It’s a magic trick every time.” –Elamin Abdelmahmoud
Scaachi Koul’s first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the issues of race, body image, love, friendship, and growing up the daughter of immigrants. When the time came to start writing her next book, Scaachi assumed she’d be updating her story with essays about her elaborate four-day wedding, settling down to domestic bliss, and continuing her never-ending arguments with her parents. Instead, the Covid pandemic hit, the world went into lockdown, Scaachi’s marriage fell apart, she lost her job, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
Sucker Punch is about what happens when the life you thought you’d be living radically changes course, everything you thought you knew about the world and yourself has tilted on its axis, and you have to start forging a new path forward. Scaachi employs her signature humour and fierce intelligence to interrogate her previous belief that fighting is the most effective tool for progress. She examines the fights she’s had—with her parents, her ex-husband, her friends, online strangers, and herself—all in an attempt to understand when a fight is worth having, and when it's better to walk away.
About Scaachi Koul
Scaachi Koul was born and raised in Calgary and is a culture writer at BuzzFeed. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Hairpin, The Globe and Mail and Jezebel. She lives in Toronto.
Instagram/Threads: @scaachi
Bluesky: @scaachi.bsky.social
About Host Shelley Youngblut
Shelley Youngblut is the CEO & Creative Ringleader of Wordfest. She was the recipient of the 2020 Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts and the 2018 Rozsa Award for Arts Leadership. She also won the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Western Magazine Awards. Youngblut was the founding editor of Calgary’s award-winning Swerve magazine and has created magazines for ESPN, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Nickelodeon, Western Living, and The Globe and Mail. She was also a former pop-culture correspondent for ABC World News Now and Canada AM.
Facebook @ShelleyYoungblut
Instagram/Threads: @youngblutshelley
Bluesky: @youngblut.bsky.social
Be Curiouser
- Review: Sucker Punch: Essays by Scaachi Koul. -Publishers Weekly
- What, Exactly, Happened to Justin Trudeau? And What Happens Next in Canada? -Slate
- The Thin Line: Hope vs. Reality in the Era of Weight-Loss Drugs. -Audible
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