This popular returning event is like witnessing a live recording of your favourite literary podcast—no headphones required. Moderator Marsha Lederman conducts back-to-back interviews with the authors of some of the most talked-about novels of the season. Sharon Bala, the bestselling author of The Boat People, joins us with Good Guys, a page-turning moral drama about the dark side of philanthropy. PP Wong’s Canada Reads-longlisted dystopian thriller, Slice the Water, explores the amplifying impacts of technology in a military dictatorship ruled by a book-burning king. Multi-award-winning author Gary Barwin spins a hilarious and poignant tale of love, death, and sacrifice in The Comedian’s Book of the Dead.
More information about the Festival:
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Event Participants:
SHARON BALA is the bestselling author of The Boat People, which won the 2020 Newfoundland & Labrador Book Award and the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. It was a finalist for Canada Reads 2018 and the 2018 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. She has published stories in Hazlitt, Maisonneuve, Riddle Fence, Room, and Prism International. She lives in St. John’s, NL, with her family.
GARY BARWIN is a writer, musician, and multimedia artist and the author of thirty-five books of poetry, fiction, and essays. His bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates, was shortlisted for and won many awards. His latest novel is The Comedian’s Book of the Dead. Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
MARSHA LEDERMAN is an award-winning journalist and author. A columnist for The Globe and Mail, she previously served as The Globe’s Western Arts Correspondent for 15 years. She is the author of Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed and October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle. Born and raised in Toronto, she has lived in Vancouver since 2007.
PP WONG is an author, screenwriter and editor. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, The Life of a Banana, was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Wong has a degree in Anthropology and Law from The London School of Economics and an MFA from UBC, where she received the celebrated Cordula and Gunter Paetzold Fellowship.
