Rising Fiction Star Elizabeth Hay to Read Jan. 27
A bright new star on the Canadian fiction horizon is Elizabeth Hay, whose latest novel, Garbo Laughs, was a fiction finalist for the Governor-General's Award. She will give a public reading in Charlottetown at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 27, at Confederation Centre Library.
Born in Owen Sound, Ontario, in 1951, she attended the University of Toronto, and worked for CBC Radio in Yellowknife, Winnipeg, and Toronto as a host, interviewer, and documentary maker, especially for "Sunday Morning." She also travelled extensively and lived abroad for eight years. A non-fiction book, Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (1993) , grows out of her time in Manhattan.
Her short fiction collection, Small Change, was nominated for a Governor General's Award. Her first novel, A Student of Weather, set on a Depression-era farm in Saskatchewan, was a finalist for the Giller Prize. She has won a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for fiction, and received the 2002 Marian Engel Award, which honours a woman writer in mid-career.
Garbo Laughs is a funny-sad story set in Ottawa in the 1990s. The main character is caught between old movies and real life. Harriet Browning forms a Friday-night movie club with three classic film and old crooner buffs: a boy who loves Sinatra, a girl with Bette Davis eyes, and a pal named after Dinah Shore. Into this circle come two Hollywood refugees, their arrival coinciding with the devastating ice storm of 1998.
Elizabeth Hay's reading is sponsored by the Â鶹´«Ã½ English Department, with support from the Canada Council of the Arts and the cooperation of Confederation Centre Library. Admission is free. For further information phone 566-0389.
