Has the rise of a globalized culture made the idea of a “National Literature” absurd? Authors from different nations discuss.
This round table discussion features authors Liam Card, A.L. Kennedy, Beatrice MacNeil, Kristel Thornell and Irvine Welsh. James Grainger hosts and moderates.
This event is part of the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference: Toronto in partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the British Council.
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Liam Card studied writing at the University of Iowa and the University of North Carolina. After graduation, Card returned to Canada and was licensed as an investment advisor, but left the field to pursue a career in writing and acting. His screenplay, Textuality, hit theatres in 2010 starring Jason Lewis, Eric McCormack, Carly Pope and Card himself. Exit Papers from Paradise is about a Michigan plumber who dreams of becoming a surgeon, exploring the gap between the person we are and the person we desperately want to be.
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James Grainger is the author of The Long Slide, which won the ReLit Award for short fiction. His reviews and articles have appeared in the Toronto Star, Quill & Quire, Globe and Mail, Elle Canada, Men's Fashion, Sharp and Rue Morgue.
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A.L. Kennedy is the author of six novels, two books of non-fiction and five collections of short stories. Her last novel, Day, was the 2007 Costa Book of the Year. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards. She is a part-time lecturer at the University of Warwick. In Kennedy’s The Blue Book, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, Elizabeth Barber is crossing the Atlantic on a cruise ship with her boyfriend when she encounters her former partner, with whom she lived a life of deception.
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Beatrice MacNeil is the author of the Dartmouth Book Award-winning novels Where White Horses Gallop, Butterflies Dance in the Dark and The Moonlight Skater, and the children’s book There’s a Mouse in the House of Miss Crouse. Set in Cape Breton where MacNeil was born, The Box of the Dead centres on Ivadoile, who was widowed early and runs a boarding house in a home left to her by her doctor husband. As she approaches old age, Ivadoile muses over the turns her life has taken.
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Kristel Thornell grew up in Sydney, Australia, and has lived in Mexico, Italy, Canada and the USA. Thornell presents her debut novel Night Street, a historical novel inspired by the life and work of Australian painter Clarice Beckett. Night Street has already received The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, the Dobbie Literature Award, the FAW Barbara Ramsden Award and the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelist Award.
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Irvine Welsh is the author of seven previous novels and four books of short fiction. He currently lives in Chicago and Miami. He is well known for his first novel, Trainspotting, which has sold over a million copies and was adapted as both a play and film. A film version of his novel Ecstasy was released earlier this year. A prequel to Trainspotting, Welsh’s Skagboys begins in the early eighties, charting the journey of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Tommy as they become young men addicted to heroin.
