Winter’s Tales presents PEI’s newest novelist, Olivia Robinson
Olivia Robinson was born in the Annapolis Valley and moved to PEI with her family. She blossomed as a creative writer not among the Valley’s orchards, but on the Island and at UPEI, and then at Memorial University and in Newfoundland and Labrador’s literary community.
That cultivation has yielded her debut novel, The Blue Moth Motel, from Newfoundland and Labrador’s esteemed publisher Breakwater Books. The PEI launch of her book will take place on Thursday, November 18, at 7:30 pm in The Carriage House at Beaconsfield Historic House, 2 Kent Street, Charlottetown.
Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance through Eventbrite. As well, a PEI Vax Pass and photo ID are required for admission.
The Blue Moth Motel, set mostly on PEI and in London, England, is a haunting and evocative exploration of the meaning of family and home.
Ingrid and Norah have an unconventional upbringing—growing up in a motel across the water from Charlottetown and raised by their mother and her female partner. The girls’ grandmother, Ada, who owns the Blue Moth, has kept them at a distance. But when she buys a piano for the motel, that changes. Years later in England, training to be a soloist and facing a major crisis, Ingrid hears from Norah back on the Island, who is reviving a party that began during their childhood to celebrate the arrival of mysterious blue moths.
Lisa Moore writes, “Olivia Robinson’s The Blue Moth Motel is luminous, shot through with unexpected, transformative beauty. Here is a queer love story alive with intensity. A brilliant new portrait of family, of sisters, of lovers, of mothers. A remarkable novel about voice, and Robinson’s voice is so strong, so true, sparkling like crystal, as bright as bright can be—she shows how talent can be harrowing, and how it can make us whole. This book is magical.”
Robinson earned a master’s degree in creative writing at MUN, working with celebrated author and mentor Lisa Moore. One of Robinson’s short stories will appear next year in Hard Ticket: New Writing Made in Newfoundland, edited by Lisa Moore. She will return to PEI this fall to rejoin the staff of The Bookmark.
This book launch is co-sponsored by The Bookmark, and the UPEI English Department and the Dean of Faculty of Arts.
