Miranda Hill’s divine comedy
Miranda Hill, author of Sleeping Funny and a UPEI Winter's Tales visiting author, is a new fiction writer from Hamilton, Ontario. She will read from her stories at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery on November 14 at 7:30 pm. Hill will also speak at UPEI's MacLauchlan Prizes for Effective Writing event on Friday, November 15 at 3:00 pm in Don and Marion McDougall Hall.
In a Toronto Star review, Jennifer Hunter says that 'Hill's stories reflect an understanding of the human comedy...Hill is able to slip unerringly into many voices: a group of suburban mothers, a man pining after a country singer who was his former love, a boy picked on at school and ignored by his parents in favour of his beautiful younger sister...They are characters we can relate to...'
PEI readers are familiar with her husband, Lawrence Hill's, novel The Book of Negroes. Hunter's reaction was 'to put that in another mental compartment and approach Miranda Hill's book as completely unique, which it is absolutely. Lawrence Hill may have encouraged her and read her stories but they are very different from his work...what a talented family!'
In Sleeping Funny, Miranda explores the consciousness of a teenage girl trying to navigate an embarrassing sex education class; a country-village minister in the 19th century going through a crisis of faith; a young pilot's widow coping with her grief by growing a Victory Garden during World War II; and a group of professional women living on a gentrified street whose routines are thrown into disarray with the arrival of a beautiful, bohemian neighbour.
Her reading is sponsored by the UPEI English Department and co-hosted by the Art Gallery, with support from The Canada Council for the Arts and The Writers' Union of Canada.
