2018-19 Literary Lecture Series- Series 2 (thursday)

Presented by:

The Heliconian Club

Event Details

This popular series has been described as a cross between a traditional book club and a university course without exams.  This year it will consist of two separate series consisting of nine two-hour sessions, each including a lecture, question period and refreshments. Both series run from September 2018 to June 2019.  

Subscription cost for non-members of the Heliconian Club is $200 including HST (108122466RT0001). 

Featured Program

      WHEN                                   SPEAKER / AUTHOR

• Thursday, September 20                 Linda Spalding
  • The Reckoning
• Thursday, October 25                      Michelle Winters
  • I am A Truck
• Thursday, November 29                  Tanya Talaga
  • Seven Fallen Feathers
• Thursday, January 17                      Linden MacIntyre
  • The Only Cafe
• Thursday, February 28                    Antanas Sileika
  • The Barefoot Bingo Caller
  Thursday, March 7                          Catherine Hernandez
  • Scarborough
• Thursday, April 11                           Kim Thuy
  • VI
• Thursday, May2                              Sharon Bala
  • The Boat People
• Thursday, June 6                            Suanne Kelman / Min Jin Lee
  • Pachinko

BOOK DESCRIPTIONS SERIES 2

Linda Spalding: A Reckoning: It opens in the spring of 1855 when John Dickinson is involved in a shameful secret that will require a tragic decision. The family’s resources have been wasted by a reckless brother, and, adding fuel to John’s desperation, the enslaved workers have been visited by a Canadian abolitionist who pushes them to escape. A Reckoning is the perfect companion to Linda Spalding’s novel, The Purchase.

Michelle Winters: I Am A Truck: A tender but lively debut novel about a man, a woman, and their Chevrolet dealer. Agathe and Réjean Lapointe are about to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary when Réjean's beloved Chevy Silverado is found abandoned at the side of the road--with no trace of Réjean. Set against the landscape of rural Acadia, I Am a Truck is a funny and moving tale about the possibilities and impossibilities of love and loyalty.

Tanya Talaga: Seven Fallen Feathers: From 2000 to 2011, seven Indigenous high school students died in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The seven were hundreds of miles away from their families, forced to leave home and live in a foreign and unwelcoming city. Five were found dead in the rivers surrounding Lake Superior, below a sacred Indigenous site. Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this small northern city that has come to manifest Canada’s long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities. Winner of the RBC Taylor Prize and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Linden MacIntyre: The Only Cafe: Pierre Cormier had secrets. He was especially silent about what had happened to him in Lebanon, the country he fled during civil war to come to Canada as a refugee. In the midst of a corporate scandal, he went missing after his boat exploded. Five years later, a single bone and a distinctive gold chain are recovered, and Pierre is at last declared dead. Which changes everything.

Antanas Sileika: The Barefoot Bingo Caller: Anatas has a keen eye for social comedy, bringing to life such memorable characters as ageing beat poets, oblivious college students, the queen of the booze cans and an obdurate porcupine. Passing through places as varied as the Prime Minister’s office and the streets of Paris, these wry and moving dispatches on work and family, art and identity are to be shared and savoured.

Catherine Hernandez: Scarborough: A poignant, multi-voiced novel about life in a low-income, culturally diverse neighbourhood of Scarborough. The novel offers a raw but empathetic glimpse into a troubled community that locates its dignity in unexpected places and refuses to be undone.

Kim Thuy: VI: Set in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Vi is born into a family intent on protecting her, the youngest. Vi translates literally as “tiny precious microscopic,” but as the armed conflict rages around her, shaping her fate and that of her family’s, Vi’s legacy becomes one of invisibility.

Sharon Bala: The Boat People: When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead some of the refugees are deemed to be members of a terrorist group and they are thrown into jail.

Min Jin Lee: Pachinko: Spanning nearly 100 years and moving from Korea at the start of the 20th century to pre- and postwar Osaka and, finally, Tokyo and Yokohama, the novel reads like a long, intimate hymn to the struggles of people in a foreign land. Min Jin Lee meticulously reconstructs the relatively overlooked history of the large ethnic-Korean community in Japan, referred to as zainichi.