O Canada! O Québec! (and a little bit O’Ireland…) Award-winning Irish poet Harry Clifton opens an evening of new novels from Canada. Francophones Neil Bissoondath and Pan Bouyoucas appear as part of Québec Now!; Bill Gaston’s new novel turns a fictional eye on Samuel de Champlain; and Giller winner Austin Clarke’s latest is a deeply affecting Toronto tale. Catherine Belyea hosts.
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Catherine Belyea is a broadcaster whose career in private radio and at the CBC has centred on music and the arts. This is the 13th year she has hosted readings and interviews at the IFOA.
Neil Bissoondath was born in Trinidad and is currently a professor of creative writing at Université Laval in Québec City. He has twice won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and has been nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award. In The Soul of All Great Designs, successful businessman Alec has set himself up with an interior design firm and a fabricated life. When he meets and falls in love with Sue, both parties have to reconcile public faces with private lives.
Pan Bouyoucas is a Greek-Canadian writer, playwright, and translator who has twice been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. He presents Aegean Tales, two novels translated from the French by award-winning Sheila Fischman. The Other, set on the Greek island of Leros, is the story of a young man who suffers a cruel twist of fate; Anna Why, a bestseller in Quebec and in France, recounts the conflict between two caretakers at the Church of the Blessed Virgin.
Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe was awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the Trillium Book Award.
Harry Clifton was born in Dublin, but has lived in Africa, Asia, and mainland Europe. He has published five collections of poetry and has received many esteemed awards including the Irish Times Poetry Now Award.
Bill Gaston is the author of several acclaimed story collections and novels, including Mount Appetite, The Good Body, Sointula, and the award-winning Gargoyles. In 2002, Gaston was the inaugural winner of the Timothy Findley Award, presented by the Writers’ Trust of Canada.
