Spring Fever: Island Writers Blossoming
The Winter's Tales Author Reading Series will feature 13 talented new Island writers, at a public reading on Monday, March 25 at 7:00 pm in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. The writers are participants in a UPEI Department of English creative writing masters class.
Presenting their works are Damon Ansems, Christopher Bailey, Michael Conway, Andrea Corder, George Curtis, Angela Deighan, Joan Grant, Ben Hartley, Angela MacLaren, Ruby Madigan, Lori Mayne, Ashley Prince, and Toni Timmins.
The audience will be treated to excerpts from a detective novel set in a dystopian near future which might resemble PEI; stories of growing up in Charlottetown's east end; and essays centred on a journalist's experiences. There are poems about Island tuna fishermen, a date with a woman who's taken the 'purity pledge,' a grandfather's false teeth, patient care in a hospital, the stresses of parenthood, and sexual desire and jealousy.
One writer's novel-in-progress is inspired by attending Charlottetown's Notre Dame Academy for Girls and another writer's by her parents' and grandparents' lives in rural Ontario. Another novel is set in present-day Iran about a Canadian woman married to an Iranian. One writer is working in fantasy and thriller genres, while another is crafting a coming-of-age fiction about three friends right after high school graduation. And there are memoirs about difficult childhoods, childbirth and medical care, and life in the Canadian Forces.
The reading is sponsored by the UPEI English Department in collaboration with the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. The public is welcome and admission is free.
