Deborah Willis at the Robson Reading Series
On Thursday, December 9 at 7:00 pm, the Robson Reading Series will host Deborah Willis, who will read from Vanishing and Other Stories (Penguin Canada), and poet Anna Swanson as she reads from The Nights Also (Tightrope Books), at UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square.
Vanishing and Other Stories was shortlisted for the 2010 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
Anna Swanson studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and Memorial University. Her poetry has appeared in PRISM international, The Antigonish Review, The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008, and numerous other literary journals. She now lives in Vancouver, BC, and works as a children’s librarian. With poems that are at once deep and pithy, The Nights Also illuminates one woman’s experience of chronic illness, relationships and gender identity, and solitude. Lorna Crozier has described Anna’s poems as “smart, original, and daring.”
Deborah Willis was born and raised in Calgary, AB. Her fiction has appeared in Grain, Event, the UK’s Bridport Prize anthology, and she was the winner of the 2005 PRISM international fiction prize. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of the Globe and Mail‘s Top 100 Books of 2009 and was nominated for a Governor General’s Award. She works as a bookseller in Victoria, BC. Vanishing and Other Stories explores emotional and physical absences, the ways in which people leave, are left, and whether or not it’s ever possible to move on. According to Alice Munro, “the emotional range and depth of these stories, the clarity and deftness is astonishing.”
Admission is free and refreshments are served. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
