At the Mike Reading
Tuesday, April 23, 7 pm
Chronicles of Crime
1048 Fort Street, Victoria, BC
Everyone Welcome
South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky
In her new story collection, award-winning author Holley Rubinksy delves into the lives of those coming face to face with personal truths that require resilience, humour and the ability to change. With a clear eye for the complexities of the human heart, her stories take the reader to deeper understandings about the nature of love, loss and longing. Spare and rich with wit, the stories in South of Elfrida celebrate the act of self-renewal.
“The descriptions are exquisite, as are the details of the characters’ lives. Holley Rubinsky is wise in the ways of the world and in the complications of the yearning heart.”—Alistair MacLeod
Holley Rubinsky is a Canadian fiction writer living in Kaslo, a village in the mountains of British Columbia. She is the author of At First I Hope for Rescue (Knopf Canada; Picador in the US), Rapid Transits and Other Stories (Polestar), and Beyond This Point (McClelland & Stewart). Winner of the $10,000 Journey Prize and a Gold Medal for fiction at the National Magazine Awards, her second book, At First I Hope for Rescue, was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Holley was the host of The Writers’ Show, produced by CJLY, Nelson. Her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women. Please visit www.holleyrubinsky.com.
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Stony River by Tricia Dower
Set in a decade we tend to think of as a more innocent time, Stony River shows in dramatic and unexpected ways how perilous it was to grow up in the fifties. Here are absent mothers, controlling fathers, biblical injunctions, teenaged longing and small-town pretense. The threat of violence is all around: angry fathers at home, rough boys in the neighborhood, strange men in strange cars, one dead girl and another gone missing.
“Think Mad Men but even madder.”—Toronto Star
Tricia Dower was a business executive before reinventing herself as a writer in 2002. Her debut novel, Stony River, was published by Penguin Canada in 2012. Her short-story collection, Silent Girl (Inanna, 2008), was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. She won first prize for fiction in The Malahat Review’s 2010 Open Season Awards. Her short fiction also has appeared in The New Quarterly, Room of One’s Own, Hemispheres, Cicada, NEO, Insolent Rudder and Big Muddy. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, Tricia lives and writes in Brentwood Bay, BC. Website: www.triciadower.com.
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The Unfinished Child by Theresa Shea
Marie MacPherson, a mother of two, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at thirty-nine. When she enters the world of genetic testing, she is entirely unprepared for the decision that lies ahead. With skill and poise, debut novelist Theresa Shea dramatically explores society’s changing views of Down syndrome over the past sixty years.
“Raise[s] compelling questions about moral responsibility in a 21st-century world.”—Publishers Weekly
Theresa Shea has published poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and articles in a number of Canadian magazines and journals. Born in Maryland and raised throughout the United States, she moved to Canada in 1977 and currently lives with her husband and three children in Edmonton, Alberta. Follow Theresa on Twitter at @sheatheresa.
Click here for more about The Unfinished Child.