The Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) and the Department of English will host Writer-in-Residence Karen Solie in conversation with internationally revered author Miriam Toews on April 17 from 7 to 9 p.m.
As part of the conversation, Toews will read selections from her work which includes best-selling novels such as New York Times editors’ choice Fight Night (2021), Women Talking (2018), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), Irma Voth (2011), The Flying Troutmans (2008), A Complicated Kindness (2004), A Boy of Good Breeding (1998) and Summer of My Amazing Luck (1996). Toews has also published one non-fiction book, Swing Low: A Life (2000).
In recognition of her literary accomplishments, Toews has been inducted into the Order of Manitoba and throughout her career has won: the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction, the Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award. Toews’ work has been translated into many languages and is read in countries around the world.
After a discussion focused on “writing, reading, fighting and talking,” Toews will take questions from the audience in a Q-and-A moderated by Solie, and will conclude with a book signing. This event is open to all members of the York community and beyond.
The LA&PS writer-in-residence program and its featured guest events are designed to supplement existing creative writing courses by providing students with access to working, professional writers for inspiration, feedback and support. Additionally, the program is dedicated to engaging the broader community by developing partnerships with local authors, North York libraries, schools and community organizations to connect the writer-in-residence with off-campus populations.
For more information and to register for the event, click here.
About Writer-in-Residence Karen Solie
Solie is the author of five collections of poetry. Her third, Pigeon (Anansi, 2009), won the Griffin Poetry Prize, Trillium Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. A volume of selected and new poems, The Living Option, was published in the U.K. in 2013, and was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (Anansi, FSG, 2015) was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, and her most recent collection, The Caiplie Caves (Anansi, FSG, Picador, 2019), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and Derek Walcott Prize. Her work has been translated into seven languages and has appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada, the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Australia, including the sixth edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Solie has taught writing for universities and writing programs across Canada and in the U.K. and was the 2022 Holloway Visiting Poet and Lecturer for the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently on the creative writing faculty with the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.