11. Up Next: Debuts to Watch

We take great joy in spotlighting debut authors at the Festival; they get to introduce their remarkable work to an enthusiastic and well-read audience, and you get the opportunity to meet them in a more intimate venue, before their inevitable rise to fame. These three authors are already garnering rave reviews. Théodora Armstrong’s Welcome to Sunny Town, about a directionless art school graduate who moves to Japan to teach ESL, has earned her comparisons to Elif Batuman and Ottessa Moshfegh. Jane Park’s Inheritance is a moving Korean-Canadian immigrant story, and a most anticipated book according to Bustle, The Millions, Book Riot, and CBC. And Jess Gibson shares beguiling short stories in The Good Eye; André Alexis called it “the best first collection of stories I’ve read in years.” Moderated by Marian Botsford Fraser.

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Event Participants:

Théodora Armstrong

THÉODORA ARMSTRONG is a fiction writer, poet, and photographer. Her collection of short fiction, Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility, was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for Fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Welcome to Sunny Town is her debut novel. Currently, she lives in North Vancouver with her husband and two children.

Marian Botsford Fraser

MARIAN BOTSFORD FRASER is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, critic, author of four nonfiction books, writer for Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Literary Review of Canada, and GRANTA; Books Editor, MORE magazine. In Vancouver in the 80s, freelance documentarian and host: CBC Radio, notably for IDEAS and Testament, and “casual temporary summer relief” announcer! PEN Canada president, 1994-95; PEN International board member and Writers in Prison Committee chair, 1999-2015. In 2022, Marian wisely moved back from Toronto to Vancouver.

Jess Gibson

JESS GIBSON was born in Toronto and frequently moved with her family, attending schools in England, Germany, the United States, Australia, and France. She later studied at McGill and the University of Toronto. After receiving her PhD in Art History from Yale University she spent several years teaching Art History to undergraduates in New York. The Good Eye is her first book.

Jane Park

JANE PARK is a second-generation Korean Canadian writer. She is a MacDowell Fellow, and was a participant in the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio, and Diaspora Dialogues. She was born in Edmonton, Alberta, lived in New York City for over a decade, and now lives in Calgary, Alberta. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of British Columbia. Inheritance is her debut novel.