Patrick deWitt is the perfect poster child for aspiring writers. Since dropping out of high school to focus on becoming a writer, he’s won the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and been a finalist for the Booker and Giller Prizes. His last novel, French Exit, is now being made into a motion picture with Michelle Pfeiffer. Moreover, his novels—of endlessly creative and varying styles and topics—are events when they publish. He joins us to discuss his latest and no less brilliant work, The Librarianist, celebrating the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life; his lifelong love of the written word; and his surprising, brave, and exceptional career to date. Moderated by Bill Richardson.

Event Participants:

Patrick deWitt

PATRICK DEWITT is the author of the novels French Exit (an international bestseller and a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize), The Sisters Brothers (winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize), and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. Born in British Columbia, he now resides in Portland, Oregon.

Bill Richardson

BILL RICHARDSON is the author of Last Week, an illustrated children’s book that sensitively portrays medical assistance in dying (MAiD); I Saw Three Ships, a collection of stories set in Vancouver’s West End; and Hare B&B, a picture book with illustrations by Bill Pechet.