Presented in partnership with SFU Continuing Studies.
Longtime Festival favourite and beloved novelist Emma Donoghue joins from Ireland to present her highly-anticipated release, Haven, for our Digital Book Club Fall selection. Called “a patient, thoughtful novel with much to say about spirituality, hope, and human failure, and about the miracle of mercy” by Esi Edugyan, Haven, set in the year 600, follows three men in a small boat as they make their way toward an island their leader has seen in a dream. A Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize-winner and nominee for both the Man Booker and Orange Prizes, Donoghue’s works regularly top international bestseller lists. Hear this fabulous storyteller in an intimate discussion speaking to craft, the moors of Ireland, and the roles of spirituality and faith in our fiction—and our lives. In conversation with bestselling author and columnist, Robert Wiersema.
Tickets for our Digital Book Club include the price of admission, as well as a hardcopy of Haven, fulfilled by Kidsbooks.
This is a virtual event.
Participants and Speakers
Emma Donoghue
EMMA DONOGHUE is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright. Her novel Room sold more than two million copies and won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean). It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes as well as the Scotiabank Giller Prize. It sold more than two million copies. Donoghue scripted the Canadian-Irish film Room, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Her fiction ranges from the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing, Touchy Subjects, Akin) to the historical (Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Astray, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars). She has also written two books for young readers, The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More or Less.
Rob Wiersema
ROBERT WIERSEMA is the author of three novels, a novella, a collection of short stories, and a book of nonfiction. He is one of Canada’s most recognized and respected book reviewers, with his work appearing regularly in The Toronto Star, Quill & Quire, The Globe and Mail, National Post, and numerous other publications. Wiersema lives in Victoria where he is a professor of creative writing at Vancouver Island University. (BRITISH COLUMBIA)