How do you find hope when your world—and perhaps even the people in it—is inconsistent, dangerous, and scary? It’s a question that too many young people need to answer. Randy Boyagoda’s Little Sanctuary is the story of children from the Global South living in a world that is falling apart, wracked by war. Kern Carter, meanwhile, shares hardships closer to home in And Then There Was Us, about a teenager navigating the aftermath of parental abuse. Sarah Mughal Rana’s Hope Ablaze explores the ugly realities of prejudice and politics through a Muslim teen finding her voice in a post-9/11 America. Whether dealing with crises themselves, or simply learning the power of hope in adversity, students will benefit from this wise, engaging, and relatable discussion, hosted by Guest Curator Kim Thúy. Grades 8–12.
Themes: Family, racism, dystopia, abuse, social justice, activism, creative writing
Curriculum Connections: English Language Arts 8-9, Creative Writing 10-12, Physical and Health Education 8-10
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Event Participants:
RANDY BOYAGODA is a novelist and professor of English at the University of Toronto. His novels, which include Original Prin and Dante’s Indiana, have been nominated for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize. He lives in Toronto with his wife and four daughters. Little Sanctuary is his first novel for young readers.
KERN CARTER is a full-time freelance writer and author who has written and self-published two novels — Thoughts of a Fractured Soul (novella) and Beauty Scars. His YA novel Boys and Girls Screaming released in April 2022, published by DCB, an imprint of Cormorant Books. Kern is also a ghostwriter with credits in Forbes, the New York Times, Global Citizen, Elle Magazine and Fatherly.com, and has ghostwritten several books. When he’s not penning novels or ghostwriting, Kern is curating stories through CRY, his online publication that creates space for artists to navigate through the emotions of their creative journey. He lives in downtown Toronto with his daughter.
SARAH MUGHAL RANA is a Muslim author who graduated from the University of Toronto and is now pursuing her MPhil in Asian studies at Oxford. She works at the intersection of human rights and Asian policy. She is a BookTok personality and the cohost of On the Write Track podcast. Outside of school, she falls down history rabbit holes and trains in traditional martial arts.
KIM THÚY was born in Vietnam in 1968. At the age of 10 she left Vietnam along with a wave of refugees commonly referred to in the media as “the boat people” and settled with her family in Quebec, Canada. A graduate in translation and law, she has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer, and restaurant owner. The author has received many awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2010, and was one of the top 4 finalists of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2018. Her books have sold more than 850,000 copies around the world and have been translated into 31 languages and distributed across 43 countries and territories. Kim Thúy lives in Montreal where she devotes her time to writing.
