October 1
Jane Urquhart is an officer of the Order of Canada. She’s also won The Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Prize (in Canada), and the Prix de Meiller Livre Etranger (in France). That probably means she’s won things you can’t even pronounce! She’s been on the shortlist and/or the jury for just about every prize available to a Canadian Writer. What can we say? A true Canlit icon.
October 8
Craig Davidson knows what it feels like to be on the Giller shortlist as well as what it feels like to do a cycle of steroids. It’s a rare double; usually, you have to pick one or the other. According to The National Post, his most recent novel¸ Cataract City, is “superb, thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining.” All this from a guy who’s devoted his life to “boxing and dog fights and zombies and werewolves and lunatic prison inmates.” Would you be surprised to learn he also went to Trent?
October 14
Jane Bow grew up in Canada, the USA, Spain, England and the Czech Republic. Her latest novel, Cally’s Way, is set in Crete. That’s a lot of territory. She covers it with “romantic yet tough-minded” prose, evoking both a stunning landscape and a tragic history. How do individual and collective sins come to be committed, and how can they be forgiven?
October 28
Michael Winter’s most recent novel, Minister Without Portfolio “is a masterful examination of the very marrow of life.” The Globe and Mail called an earlier one, The Architects Are Here, a “flamboyant gem of a novel,” at once “wide-angled and crowded with dramatic incident.” Michael will draw the crowd; come see what kind of incidents we can muster.
November 5
Steven Heighton’s fiction and poetry has been translated into ten languages, which is almost certainly more languages than you can name off the top of your head. He’s the winner of numerous awards and prizes, and has taught creative writing in places as diverse as Banff, Alberta and St. Petersburg, Russia (maybe he likes the cold?). Come if you feel like being part of a “big, ambitious, literary adventure full of blood, gristle and soul.”
November 11
KD Miller’s new collection of short stories, All Saints, is a “quietly astonishing book.” Think of how much better that is than all the loudly boring people you know. Her previous book, Brown Dwarf, involved a serial killer, a missing girl, childhood guilt and “larval lesbianism.” Interested?
November 19
Real Life Peterburgher Double Header!!!!!
Michelle Berry’s latest novel, Interference, is a “dark-humoured glimpse behind neighbourhood doors” in a town very like Peterborough. Jonathan Bennett’s latest novel, Colonial Hotel, is about a civil war in an unnamed foreign country. His book is “devastatingly beautiful.” Hers is “suspenseful, compassionate and awesomely creepy.” We’ve got violence, intrigue, humour and heartache in exotic and homegrown varieties. You don’t even have to choose.