BILL HAUGLAND and ROBERT POBI
- Thursday May 9, 2013, — 7pm
- Rigaud Public Library: 102 St Pierre, Rigaud
Bill Haugland was born in Montreal and attended Sir George Williams University for one year, before taking courses in broadcasting at Ryerson Institute, Toronto. His 45-year career with CFCF Television News (now CTV Montreal) as a reporter, programme-host and anchorman provided him with a wealth of material for his novels.
His two published novels propel a young TV reporter, Ty Davis, into life-threatening scenarios involving Montreal’s underbelly. Ty and his colleagues face the wrath of the Mafia and the Hell’s Angels in Mobile 9. In The Bidding, they are confronted by a vicious Satanic cult with international roots in the 19th century and a powerful corporate and political influence in the 1970s.
Bill retired from CTV Montreal in 2007 and lives in Vermont with his wife, Linda. He is currently working on a collection of short stories, while planning to fashion new adventures for a possible third Ty Davis Mystery.
Robert Pobi’s first novel, Bloodman, was an international success, selling in more than a dozen countries – including multiple printings in the UK and reaching number ten on the best seller list in France. Bloodman received awed reviews across the industry – a Booklist Starred Review called it “…a remarkable debut…”, and Sarah Weinman, writing for the National Post, labeled it “…a Sixth-Sense-like take on Thomas Harris in his prime…”. O – the Oprah Magazine, selected it for their summer 2012 reading list, followed by a slot in Suspense Magazine’s list of the best thrillers of 2012.
His second book for Simon & Schuster Canada, River of the Dead, is slated for an early 2014 release.
Visit him at robertpobi.com
DENIS SAMPSON
- Thursday May 16, 2013, — 12:30pm
- Atwater Library Auditorium: 1200 Atwater Avenue, Montreal, QC
- Presented in collaboration with the Atwater Library and Computer Centre
Literary biographer and memoirist Denis Sampson discusses how diverse novelists have recalled the discovery of their own literary voice.
Denis Sampson has been a Montreal resident since 1970. In Canada, his best known work is the biography Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist; in Ireland and UK, two books on the novelist John McGahern have reached a wide audience. The most recent of these is Young John McGahern: Becoming a Novelist (Oxford University Press, 2012). Sampson has just completed a memoir entitled A Migrant Heart.
NANCY RICHLER
- Sunday May 26, 2013, — 2pm
- St Mary's Hall: 261 Main Road, Hudson, QC
Nancy Richler’s first novel, Throwaway Angels, was published in 1996 and was shortlisted for the 1997 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel. Her second novel, Your Mouth Is Lovely, won the 2003 Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction, Italy’s 2004 Adei-Wizo Prize, and has been translated into seven languages. Nancy was a finalist for the prestigious Giler Prize just last year, for her most recent novel, The Imposter Bride. Born in Montreal, Nancy Richler lived for many years in Vancouver but has recently returned to her hometown.
LINDA KAY
- Wednesday May 29, 2013, — 7pm
- Westmount Library: 4574 Sherbrooke West, Montreal, QC
Associate Professor Linda Kay, chair of Concordia University's Journalism Department, was the first female sportswriter at the Chicago Tribune and worked as a journalist for over twenty years before launching her academic career full-time. She currently teaches classes in News Reporting, Magazine Writing and Gender & Journalism at Concordia and won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence in the Faculty of Arts and Science in 2007. Prof. Kay’s primary research interest centres on pioneering female journalists in Canada, and her book on the founders of the Canadian Women’s Press Club in 1904, The Sweet Sixteen, was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2012. She has published two other books, a memoir entitled The Reading List, and a city travel guide entitled Romantic Days and Nights in Montreal.
Events come & gone in 2013
Love and Loss Theme featuring FELICIA MIHALI, ALICE PETERSEN and Alice Zorn
- Thursday April 25, 2013 — 2pm, free
- Eleanor London Library: 5851 Cavendish Blvd., Côte Saint-Luc, QC
Felicia Mihali is a Romanian-born journalist, a novelist and a teacher who lives in Montreal. She studied French, English and Dutch and is a specialist in postcolonial literature. Today, she writes in French and in English and teaches French. Her first book in French, Le Pays du fromage, was published in 2002, followed by six others, including Sweet Sweet China in 2007, Dina in 2008 and L’Enlèvement de Sabina in 2011. In 2012, she published her first book in English, The Darling of Kandahar, which was inspired by a news item reported in Maclean’s magazine.
Alice Petersen, a citizen of Canada and New Zealand, has had stories shortlisted for the CBC Literary awards, The Journey Prize and the Metcalf Rooke Award for fiction. In 2009 she won the Richard Adams Award offered by the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. Her first collection, All the Voices Cry (Biblioasis, 2012) was recently awarded the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s Concordia University First Book Prize. Alice Petersen lives in the woods near Shawinigan, Quebec, with her husband and two daughters.
Originally from Ontario, Alice Zorn now lives in Montreal. Her book of short fiction, Ruins & Relics, was a finalist for the 2009 Quebec Writers’ Federation McAuslan First Book Prize. In 2011 she published a novel, Arrhythmia, with NeWest Press. Her story “Frida Walks” won first prize in Prairie Fire’s 2011 Fiction Contest. She has just completed her second novel, which is set in Pointe St-Charles in Montreal, and is at work on a new collection of short fiction.
PETER DUBÉ
- Saturday April 13, 2013 — 2pm
part of the imagiNation festival - purchase tickets here - Morrin Centre: 44 chaussée des Écossais, Quebec City, QC
Peter Dubé is the author of four works of fiction: Hovering World (DC Books 2002), At the Bottom of the Sky, (DC Books, 2007), Subtle Bodies (Lethe Press, 2010), and most recently, the novel The City’s Gates (Cormorant, 2012). In addition to his fiction, he is the editor of three anthologies and a widely published art critic. Rebel Satori will publish his collection of prose poems, Conjure: a Book of Spells this year.
Peter will be interviewed by Angelica Montgomery of CJAD Radio.
JULIJA ŠUKYS
- Wednesday February 13, 2013 — 7pm, free
- Pointe-Claire Public Library, Marjorie Donald Building: 2600 College, Sherbrooke, QC
Julija Šukys is a passionate archival researcher and a writer of creative nonfiction whose work examines the facets of individual lives with a view to uncovering bigger truths. She is the author of two books, Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė (Nebraska 2012) and Silence is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (Nebraska, 2007). Epistolophilia was shortlisted for the QWF's Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction, and was long-listed for the Charles Taylor Award in Literary Nonfiction.
Julija will be talking about and reading from Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė. The book tells the story of a little-known university librarian and Holocaust rescuer who entered the Vilna Ghetto (Lithuania) for three years under the pretence of collecting unreturned library books. In reality, Šimaitė was bringing in medicine, food, and other forms of aid, then carrying out and hiding letters, manuscripts, and even children. Šukys painstakingly sifted through a collection of thousands of letters and scores of letters scattered to archives around the world. Fragment by fragment, she succeeded in painting a nuanced portrait of a compelling and courageous life.
QWF gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.
