Reading: Debra Adelaide, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Barry Dempster, Lisa Moore

Debra Adelaide’s work includes two previous novels, The Hotel Albatross and Serpent Dust, three successful collections of stories, and memoirs on the theme of mothering. She has also worked as a freelance editor and book reviewer, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. Adelaide’s The Household Guide to Dying follows a popular household advice columnist who decides to organize her remaining months on earth – and her husband’s and children’s lives without her – in the form of a book, after learning that she will soon lose her long battle with cancer.

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden (Canada/UK) is the author of two books of poetry, Learning Russian, nominated for the pat Lowther Award, and Clinic Day. Her fiction and non-fiction has been nominated for numerous awards. Bryden presents her debut novel, No Place Strange, which follows the lives of four individuals – a young Jewish Canadian; Farid, a Lebanese man living in Greece; and Farid’s mother and cousin – affected by the actions of one beautiful Palestinian terrorist named Rafa Ahmed. A powerful story examining how ordinary people, politically motivated or not, react to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Barry Dempster is the author of two volumes of short stories, a novel, a children’s book, and nine previous collections of poetry, including the Jack Chalmers Award-winning The Burning Alphabet. Born and raised in Toronto, he presently lives in Holland Landing, Ontario, where he runs a film series, two book clubs and a writing group. Dempster’s tenth poetry collection, Love Outlandish, undoes the clichés that have barnacled people’s love lives by responding to D.H. Lawrence’s plea that we should discover and articulate what the heart really wants rather than some idealized version of it.

Lisa Moore is the author of two collections of stories, Degrees of Nakedness and Open, as well as a novel, Alligator, which were nominated or awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and Caribbean region). Moore presents her new novel, February, about the oil rig Ocean Ranger sinking off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982, and the story of those left behind after the tragedy.

Ania Szado is the author of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlisted novel, Beginning of Was.