At IFOA’s annual presentation of the books shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Awards (English-language Fiction), finalists
Annabel Lyon and
Michael Crummey read appear via live video link-up from the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Finalists
Kate Pullinger and
Deborah Willis read on stage at IFOA.
Governor General’s Literary Award winner
Miriam Toews reads onstage at IFOA from Alice Munro’s
Too Much Happiness, which is also shortlisted for the award.
2008 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry winner
Jacob Scheier also reads.
Tickets: $25/$20 members
Photo: 2008 winner Nino Ricci reading from
The Origin of Species at last year's Governor General's Literary Award event.
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Michael Crummey is the author of a memoir, Newfoundland: Journey into a Lost Nation, three books of poetry, a book of short stories, and two previous novels, River Thieves and The Wreckage. A play based on one of his short stories (Afterimage) was part of the 2008/09 World Stage season at Harbourfront Centre. In his third novel, Galore, Crummey creates an intricate family saga and a love story spanning two decades in the improbable medieval world that was rural Newfoundland: remote, isolated, exposed.
Lewis DeSoto was born in South Africa, and studied at what is now the Emily Carr College of Art. His paintings have been widely exhibited across Canada, and his novel A Blade of Grass was nominated for numerous prestigious awards including the Man Booker Prize. His most recent book is a biography of Emily Carr.
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Annabel Lyon has published two award-nominated short story collections: Oxygen and The Best Thing for You. She lives in New Westminster, B.C.. The Golden Mean, Lyon’s much anticipated debut novel, is a vivid imagining of the friendship between the philosopher Aristotle and the young Alexander the Great. Told from the frank point-of-view of Aristotle himself, The Golden Mean reveals how Aristotle’s genius influenced the boy who would conquer the known world. The novel is currently shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Governor General's Literary Award and and Scotiabank Giller Prizes.
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Novelist Kate Pullinger works both in print and new media. Her most recent print works include The Mistress of Nothing, A Little Stranger, Weird Sister, and the short story collection My Life as a Girl in a Men’s Prison. Her digital fiction projects include her multiple award-winning collaboration with Chris Joseph, “Inanimate Alice.” Pullinger resides in the UK where she is a Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University. The Mistress of Nothing, set in Victorian London and Egypt, chronicles the great divide that existed between classes and how status transcended well beyond country borders.
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Jacob Scheier’s poems have appeared in several literary journals, including Descant and The White Wall Review, and have been aired on CBC radio. Scheier was the winner of the 2003 Art Bar Discovery Night and formerly edited existere, York University’s journal of art and literature. His collection More to Keep Us Warm won the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.
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Miriam Toews is the author of three previous novels – Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, and the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning A Complicated Kindness – and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. Toews presents her latest novel, The Flying Troutmans, winner of the 2008 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Following an SOS call from her niece, Hattie returns to Canada only to find her sister on her way to the psychiatric ward. The three set off on a wild road trip to find the kids’ long-lost father.
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Deborah Willis was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Her work has appeared in Grain, Event and the UK's Bridport Prize anthology.
 readings.org (web).thumbnail.jpg "Nino Ricci, 2008 IFOA (c) readings.org")
