Presenting Ondjaki and Granma Nineteen

Next week we're delighted to announce that Ondjaki, one of Angola's best-known and most beloved authors, will embark on a cross-country Canadian tour. Are you in Ottawa? Toronto? Montreal? Windsor? Vancouver? Come out and hear the voice that has captured over a dozen international prizes and earned praise around the globe. For his complete tour schedule, read on! We'll have more about Granma Nineteen in the coming days.

1. Ottawa Writers Fest, OTTAWA

Tuesday, April 29 – 8:30pm 

"Another Word for Nothing Left" 

with Padma Viswanathan, Ondjaki and Nadia Bozak

hosted by CBC's Adrian Harewood 

(location: Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar Street at Elgin)

2. International Festival of Authors (IFOA), TORONTO

Wednesday, April 30 – 7:30pm

Reading with Ondjaki, Miriam Toews and Evie Wyld 

(location: York Quay Centre, Brigantine Room)

3. Blue Metropolis Festival, MONTREAL                        

                           Friday, May 2^nd – 7pm – 7:20pm

                            Book signing (location: Las Americas)

Saturday, May 3^rd – 3:30pm – 4:30pm 

“Memory, family lore and fiction” 

with Luis Alberto Urrea, David Homel, and Ondjaki

(location: Las Americas)

Saturday, May 3^rd – 5pm – 6pm

“Cara a Cara Com Ondjaki” Portuguese language event 

(location: Las Americas)

Saturday, May 3^rd – 8pm – 9:30pm

“Face to Face With Ondjaki” Interview

hosted by CBC's Paul Kennedy 

(location: Salle Godin)

4. Biblioasis Spring Fiction Launch, WINDSOR

Tuesday, May 6 – 7pm

Reading with Ray Robertson, C.P. Boyko, K.D. Miller and Ondjaki 

(location: Biblioasis bookshop)

5. Incite: Vancouver International Writers Fest, VANCOUVER

Wednesday, May 7 – 7:30pm

Reading with Ondjaki, Claire Battershill and Sean Michaels 

(location: Alice MacKay Room, Central Library)

Kathy Page at Incite Vancouver

Just a quick note to remind you that Biblioasis author Kathy Page will be appearing with Doretta Lau and Eva Stachniak this Wednesday April 2nd at Incite Vancouver. It's the first official event for Paradise & Elsewhere (though she launches later in Vancouver on April 29th, in Salt Spring on May 1st, and in Toronto May 27-28th at the Eh-List). Incite's events are always great. If you're in Vancouver, check it out!

7:30pm on Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Admission is free
Alice MacKay room, Central Library

The Writers

Doretta Lau

Doretta Lau is a journalist who covers arts and culture for Artforum International, South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal Asia, and LEAP. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Day One, Event, Grain Magazine, Prairie Fire, PRISM International, Ricepaper, sub-TERRAIN, and Zen Monster. In 2013, she was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She splits her time between Vancouver and Hong Kong, where she is at work on a novel and a screenplay.

The stories of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? present an updated and whimsical new take on what it means to be Canadian. Lau’s stories feature the children and grandchildren of immigrants, transnational adoptees and multiracial adults who came of age in the 1990s—all struggling to find a place in the Western world and using the only language they know to express their hopes, fears and expectations.

Kathy Page

Kathy Page is the author of seven novels, including Alphabet, a Governor General's Award finalist in 2005, and The Story of My Face, longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002, as well as many short stories, previously collected in As In Music. She recently co-edited In the Flesh, a collection of personal essays about the human body, and has written for television and radio. Born in the UK, Kathy has lived on Salt Spring Island since 2001.

Paradise and Elsewhere
In the beginning there was a garden. Or was it an island? A bargain? Certainly there was sex. In these mythical, magical stories Kathy Page parts company from traditional wisdom to blaze a new trail through the wild, lush, half-fantastic and half-real terrain of origin stories.

Eva Stachniak

Eva Stachniak was born in Wrocław, Poland. Her debut novel, Necessary Lies, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2000. Her first novel based on the life of Catherine the Great, The Winter Palace, has been a bestseller in Canada, Poland and Germany. Stachniak lives in Toronto, where she is at work on her next novel.

In Empress of the Night, Catherine the Great takes center stage as she relives her astonishing ascension to the throne, her rule over an empire, and the sacrifices that made her the most feared and commanding woman of her time. Gorgeously written with vivid detail and lyrical prose, Stachniak’s novel is an intensely intimate portrayal of a woman in charge of her fortunes, who must navigate the sorrows, triumphs, and hopes of both her soul and a nation.

Biblioasis at Incite Vancouver

For 25 years the Vancouver Writers Festival has strived to connect authors with their readers, and present the public with the very best of literature. In the Spring, through their Incite reading series, they provide an atmosphere to promote the exchange and cultivation of ideas, encourage reluctant readers to crack open a book and present opportunities for lovers of literature to get in contact with their favourite writers. In keeping with this tradition, Biblioasis author Andrew Steinmetz will be making an appearance on Wednesday, February 19 as part of the Incite reading series, to discuss his Hilary Weston Prize-nominated biography This Great Escape.

This Great Escape is the story of Michael Paryla, a Canadian actor with an uncredited 57 seconds of screen time in the 1963 blockbuster The Great Escape, and his history—from childhood flight from Nazism to suspicious death twenty years later—intersects bitterly, ironically and movingly with the plot of Sturges's great war film.

This opportunity to connect with Steinmetz and learn about the process behind the writing of This Great Escape is not to be missed. Also appearing are Catherine Bush, shortlisted for Ontario's Trillium Award, and Adrianne Harun, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.

The event starts at 7:30pm and is located in the Alice MacKay Room of their Central Library. Admission is free.

Visit their website for more information about upcoming events and to RSVP. And stay tuned for more Biblioasis authors at InCite: Cynthia Flood on March 5th, Kathy Page on April 2nd, and Ondjaki on May 8th!

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