Haisla Novelist to Deliver 18th Annual Margaret Laurence Lecture
Eden Robinson to Address Issues of “Writing from Home” at November 14 Lecture
Trent University is pleased to announce that award-winning Canadian Indigenous author Eden Robinson will deliver the eighteenth annual Margaret Laurence Lecture at Trent University on Wednesday, November 14. The lecture will take place at 8 p.m. in the First Peoples House of Learning, Peter Gzowski College Lecture Hall, room 117.
In her lecture, entitled “Fictionalizing Place: The Dangers of Writing from Home”, Ms. Robinson will be discussing the issues surrounding setting fictional stories in real locations and villages.
Dr. Marg Hobbs, chair of the Women’s Studies Department at Trent, praised Eden Robinson’s work and is delighted to be welcoming her to the University as the 2007 Margaret Laurence lecturer.
“Eden Robinson’s novels and short stories involve intimate explorations of place, identity, ecology, colonial and gender relations, and love – themes that were also at the heart of Margaret Laurence’s life work,” Prof. Hobbs said. “Her fiction, set in coastal villages and urban centres, is richly layered with social realism and spirituality, and her characters have a wonderful habit of staying about in one’s mind long after the book is back on its shelf.”
Ms. Robinson grew up in Kitamaat Village in British Columbia and is the first Haisla novelist. Her collection of short stories, Traplines, won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1998. Her first novel, Monkey Beach, was short-listed for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction in 2000 and named a notable book by The Globe and Mail. Her most recent novel is Blood Sports.
The annual Margaret Laurence Lecture honours Trent’s fourth chancellor, and acknowledges her contributions to literature, feminism, ecology, and the peace movement. The 2007 lecture is sponsored by the departments of Women's Studies, Canadian Studies, and Indigenous Studies, as well as the Margaret Laurence Lecture Fund and the Canadian Studies Directorate, Heritage Canada.
The lecture is free and all members of the community are invited to attend. A reception will follow in the First Peoples House of Learning Gathering Space, Gzowski College room 102.
Posted on Wednesday, November 7, 2007.
Gallery and Speech from the 2007 Margaret Laurence Lecture
The Eighteenth Annual Margaret Laurence Lecture was given by Eden Robinson, entitled “Fictionalizing Place: The Dangers of Writing from Home” on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at the First Peoples Lecture Hall.
You can find an audio recording on the Trent University Podcasting site or go directly to the MP3 file. To save file, right-click the link and select "Save As..."