International Marquee

Commonwealth Writer’s Prize-winning author Marina Endicott and Giller-award-winner Johanna Skibsrud join veteran broadcaster Eric Friesen in a free-ranging discussion of both their bodies of work, and their explorations of complex moral issues of prejudice, class, cultural difference, the imperial mindset, and our responsibility toward other humans, sentient beings, and the natural world.

Marina’s astonishingly beautiful The Difference takes us on a clipper ship journey from Nova Scotia to the South Pacific as it is experienced by a thoughtful pre-teen, Kay. Hailed by the Globe and Mail as “a sweet-natured but sharp-eyed and quick-tongued social observer in the Jane Austen — Barbara Pym — Anne Tyler tradition, who can wring love, revulsion and hilarity in a single page,” Marina brings her sympathetic eye to the wonder of the natural world, and the quest for understanding of things that informs Kay’s every waking moment.

Johanna’s forthcoming novel Island, meanwhile, takes place on an imaginary island in the South Pacific in the perhaps near-future, and is an Orwellian tale that vividly renders the inevitable aftermath of the Imperial sweep of subjection and exploitation of that region, where deep socio-economic divides inform the lives lived there. Focusing on the lives of two women–a rebel and a diplomat–as they navigate the island’s mounting insurrection, the story works as part fable, part parable, and makes urgent commentary on our relationships to history, responsibility, colonial imperialism and the wireless world.

Event Sponsor: King’s Crossing

Residence Inn, St. Lawrence Ballroom
8:00 – 9:30 pm
Reg $40 / $38 Senior