Text and the City: The Fictionista Reading Series
Four fabulous women writers appear at the Fictionista Reading Series in Toronto
It’s so not about the shoes. Unlike Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, these four Fictionistas are over Manolo Blahniks and Cosmos. Sure, they’ll be offering their audiences stories about sex and relationships when they read at the Victory Café at 7 p.m. on June 19, 2008 — only with a lot more humour, sass, irony, adventure travel, and… ghosts.
DEDE CRANE
The Cult of Quick Repair is a collection of vivid and moving stories portraying modern lives in highly-charged relationship situations. Dede Crane’s novel Sympathy was a finalist for the Victoria Butler Book Prize. Crane has also co-edited, with Lisa Moore, a collection of non-fiction stories about the experience of giving birth, scheduled for release this fall. Dede lives in Victoria.
SHARI LAPEÑA
In Things Go Flying Lapeña takes the wit of David Sedaris and the outrageousness of Douglas Coupland to create a dark, hilarious and wildly inventive contemporary comedy about how the past can come back to haunt you. Literally. Shari Lapeña’s work has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards. In 2004, she won the Great Toronto Literary Project. She makes her home in Toronto.
LINDA LEITH
The Desert Lake is a smart, subtle novel that follows a traveller in the midst of a relationship crisis along the Silk Road to the Taklimakan Desert, known as the Ocean of Death. Linda Leith’s second novel, The Tragedy Queen, was a “Canadians Recommend” title for Canada Reads. Its French translation (Un Amour de Salomé) won the 2003 Governor General’s Award. Leith is founder and artistic director of Montreal’s Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival. She lives in Montreal.
LAURA LUSH
Going to the Zoo is a poignant collection of short stories that subversively and playfully looks at women, power, and control in the sexually charged arena of female/male relationships. Laura Lush received the Bliss Carman Award for Poetry in 1987and was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award in 1992 for her first book of poetry, Hometown. She currently teaches and lives in Toronto.
WHAT IS FICTIONISTAS?
Ficitonistas is a unique cosmopolitan reading series for female literary fiction writers and their readers. The series, now in its second year, involves accomplished women writers from the thriving writing community that currently exists in Canada. Events have been held in metros across the country: Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto.
