Archive for the ‘Halifax’ Category
Raised in rural Saskatchewan and now living in Toronto, Holly Luhning holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature, madness and theories of the body. She has received a Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor’s Arts Award, and her collection of poetry, Sway, was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. Her first novel, Quiver, is forthcoming in January 2011.
Time: Thursday, January 19th @ 7p
Location: Sobey Building- Saint Mary’s University, Rm 165, 903 Robie St
Admission: Free
Following in the footsteps of The Birth House, her powerful debut novel, The Virgin Cure secures Ami McKay’s place as one of our most beguiling storytellers. (Not that it has to . . . that is pretty much taken care of!)“I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.” So begins The Virgin Cure, a novel set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the year 1871.
As a young child, Moth’s father smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from his wife and daughter forever, and Moth has never stopped imagining that one day they may be reunited – despite knowing in her heart what he chose over them. Her hard mother is barely making a living with her fortune-telling, sometimes for well-heeled clients, yet Moth is all too aware of how she really pays the rent. Life would be so much better, Moth knows, if fortune had gone the other way – if only she’d had the luxury of a good family and some station in life. The young Moth spends her days wandering the streets of her own and better neighbourhoods, imagining what days are like for the wealthy women whose grand yet forbidding gardens she slips through when no one’s looking. Yet every night Moth must return to the disease- and grief-ridden tenements she calls home.The summer Moth turns twelve, her mother puts a halt to her explorations by selling her boots to a local vendor, convinced that Moth was planning to run away. Wanting to make the most of her every asset, she also sells Moth to a wealthy woman as a servant, with no intention of ever seeing her again.These betrayals lead Moth to the wild, murky world of the Bowery, filled with house-thieves, pickpockets, beggars, sideshow freaks and prostitutes, but also a locale frequented by New York’s social elite. Their patronage supports the shadowy undersphere, where businesses can flourish if they truly understand the importance of wealth and social standing – and of keeping secrets.
In that world Moth meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as an “infant school.” There Moth finds the orderly solace she has always wanted, and begins to imagine herself embarking upon a new path.Yet salvation does not come without its price: Miss Everett caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are “willing and clean,” and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like Moth. That’s not the worst of the situation, though. In a time and place where mysterious illnesses ravage those who haven’t been cautious, no matter their social station, diseased men yearn for a “virgin cure” – thinking that deflowering a “fresh maid” can heal the incurable and tainted. Through the friendship of Dr. Sadie, a female physician who works to help young women like her, Moth learns to question and observe the world around her. Moth’s new friends are falling prey to fates both expected and forced upon them, yet she knows the law will not protect her, and that polite society ignores her. Still she dreams of answering to no one but herself. There’s a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street.
Time: Tuesday, December 6th @ 7p
Location: Spring Garden Rd. Memorial Library
Admission: Free
Join us for an intimate and interactive look at some of Atlantic Canada’s Best authors. This month we have Wayne Johnston and Ami McKay with us to take a look at their newest releases.
Wayne Johnston is one of the greatest storytellers of his generation. The Newfoundland native, is the author of numerous bestselling and multi-award winning novels, including The Divine Ryans, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, The Custodian of Paradise and his latest narrative, A World Elsewhere.
Ami McKay hit the mark with her first full-length novel The Birth House; the touching tale of a Nova Scotia Midwife resonated with readers and critics alike, earning the Scots Bay resident numerous awards, nominations and a lengthy stay atop the bestseller lists. Her long awaited follow-up is The Virgin Cure.
The Literary Luncheon is hosted by Halifax-based author, journalist and broadcaster Stephen Patrick Clare.
Time: Monday, November 28th @ 12p
Location: The Halifax Club
Admission: 24.95 for Members, 37.49 for non member guests
Dress Code: Smart Casual
An authoritative and fascinating exploration of the natural history of the east coast of North America. The North Atlantic coast of North America — commonly known as the Atlantic Coast — extends from Newfoundland and Labrador through the Maritime Provinces and the Northeastern United States south to Cape Hatteras. This North Atlantic region belongs to the sea. The maritime influence on climate, flora, and fauna is dominant — even far inland. This is where the great northern boreal forests intermingle with the mixed coniferous-hardwood forests farther south and where the cold, iceberg-studded Labrador Current from the Arctic and the warm Gulf Stream of the tropics vie for supremacy. Filled with stunning photographs, the book includes chapters on the geological origins of this region, the two major forest realms, and the main freshwater and marine ecosystems and also describes the flora and fauna within each of these habitats. Finally, it looks at what has been lost but also what remains of the natural heritage of the region and how that might be conserved in future. Written by the Atlantic region’s best-known nature writer, Harry Thurston, The Atlantic Coast draws upon the most up-to-date science on the ecology of the region as well as the author’s lifetime experience as a biologist and naturalist. It is both a personal tribute and an accessible, comprehensive guide to an intriguing ecosystem.
Time: Monday, November 21st @ 7p
Location: Museum of Natural History, 1747 Summer St
Admission: Free
Raised in rural Saskatchewan and now living in Toronto, Holly Luhning holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature, madness and theories of the body. She has received a Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor’s Arts Award, and her collection of poetry, Sway, was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. Her first novel, Quiver, is forthcoming in January 2011.
Time: Thursday, January 19th @ 7p
Location: Rm 165, Sobey Building, Saint Mary’s University, 903 Robie St
Admission: Free
About Warren:
Warren Heiti is currently a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Dalhousie University. His research interests include ancient Greek philosophy, ethics, ecological ethics, and lyric philosophy. He has taught sessionally at Dalhousie University and St. Mary’s University, and has facilitated a poetry workshop at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.
About Heather:
Heather Jessup’s poetry, fiction, reviews, and interviews have been published in journals across Canada and the U.S. including The Malahat Review, The Denver Quarterly, andPRISM International. Her first novel, The Lightning Field, will be published with Gaspereau Press in Fall 2011. She is completing her dissertation on contemporary Canadian literature and visual art in the English Department at the University of Toronto.
Time: Tuesday, December 6th @ 7p
Location: Room 101, The Atrium, 923 Robie St.
Admission: Free
Steven Heighton’s most recent books are the novel Every Lost Country (May 2010) and the poetry collection Patient Frame (April 2010). He is also the author of the novel Afterlands, which appeared in six countries, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and was a “best of year” selection in ten publications in Canada, the USA, and the UK. The book has recently been optioned for film. He has also published The Shadow Boxer—a Canadian bestseller and a Publishers’ Weekly Book of the Year for 2002—which appeared in five countries. His other fiction books are the story collections Flight Paths of the Emperor and On earth as it is, while his poetry collections include The Ecstasy of Skeptics and The Address Book.
-From the Author’s site
Time: Tuesday, November 22nd @ 7pm
Location: Sobey Building, Rm 165, Saint Mary’s University
Admission: Free
Alex Pierce’s voice can be heard echoing down the long corridors of memory and myth. It’s not that these poems live in the past; instead, they manage to bring it back to life with uncanny sensual details and an urgency that makes you realize some fires never really go out. The book’s scope is wide: beautifully crafted family reminiscences; Bach and Beethoven; Raphael and Goltzius; Shakespeare; the Greek Myths and the fate of the Romanovs. Vox Humana is all lilt and discipline in its courtliness, its surrender to the theatre of the moment at its most alive.
Time: Tuesday, November 8th @ 7p
Location: Sobey Building, Rm 165, Saint Mary’s University
Admission: Free
Join a panel of Halifamous readers as they argue for their pick from this year’s Giller short list. Special guests Don Connolly of CBC’s Information Morning; Poet Laureate Tanya Davis; author Sue Goyette; executive director of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Nate Crawford; and Mike Hamm of the independent bookstore Bookmark will defend their choices. The Scotiabank Giller Prize will be announced on November 8.
Time: Tuesday, November 1st @ 7p
Location: Spring Garden Rd Public Library
Admission: Free
In August Gale, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Barbara Walsh—who has interviewed killers, bad cops, and crooked politicians in the course of her career—faces the most challenging story of her lifetime: asking her father about his childhood pain. In the process, she takes us on two heartrending odysseys: one into a deadly Newfoundland hurricane and the lives of schooner fishermen who relied on God and the wind to carry them home; the other, into a squall stirred by a man with many secrets: a grandfather who remained a mystery until long after his death.
Sixty-eight years after the hurricane that claimed several of her ancestors, Walsh searches for memories of the August gale and the grandfather who abandoned her dad as a young boy. Together, she and her father journey to Newfoundland to learn about the 1935 storm, and along the way her dad begins to talk about the man he cannot forgive. As she recreates the scenes of the violent hurricane and a small boy’s tender past, she holds onto a hidden desire: to heal her father and redeem the grandfather she has never met.
Time: Tuesday, November 1st @ 7pm
Location: Keshen Goodman Public Library
Admission: Free