Every year, award-winning Canadian writer and Glendon faculty member Michael Ondaatje hosts a creative writers’ reading series on campus. Ondaatje is able to attract some of the most important writers, poets, dramaturges and artistic directors of the current Canadian scene, who read from their works and explore their ideas.These lectures are free and open to the public.
Left: Michael Ondaatje
The second event of this series for the current academic year welcomes authors Anne Coleman and Linda Spalding for a reading and discussion on memoirs and non-fiction, on Monday, Nov. 29, at 4pm in Glendon’s Albert Tucker Room (formerly the Senior Common Room), 3rd floor, York Hall. (The first event featured authors Susan Swan and Micheal Winter.)
Coleman is the author of I’ll Tell You a Secret: A Memory of Seven Summers, nominated this year for a Governor General’s Award in the non-fiction category. In a personal coming-of-age story from the 1950s, Coleman recounts her memories of summers in a picturesque Quebec village. In particular, she describes meeting Canadian literary figure Hugh MacLennan when she was 14 years old and her unlikely friendship with a man so much older than herself.
Spalding is the author of such celebrated works as Daughters of Captain Cook, The Paper Wife, The Follow and, in collaboration with her daughter Esta Spalding, the novel: Mere In The Follow, Spalding recounts her travels in the rainforests of Borneo, studying the life of orangutan researcher Birute Galdikas. Spalding will be reading from this work, as well as from her forthcoming book, Witness, to be published by McClelland & Stewart early next year. This book recounts Spalding’s relationship with a woman in prison for murder.
This article was submitted to YFile by Glendon communications officer Marika Kemeny.