Kingston WritersFest's An Afternoon with the GGs

Sunday, February 2, 2014 - 2:00pm

Holiday Inn Waterfront- Islandview Room
2 Princess Street
Kingston, ON
K7L 1A2

The thread that unites the offerings of these three authors is family; its joys, its sorrows, its secrets, and its complexities. Join Katherena Vermette, Kenneth Bonert and Carolyn Abraham, who take the stage with host Jared Bland for readings and conversation. Gather your loved ones and enjoy these newest members of the Kingston WritersFest family.

Poetry winner Katherena Vermette's North End Love Songs is as much a love song to Winnipeg's "nortend" as it is elegy to the big brother who died when Katherena was a teenager. The poems are an ode to the neighbourhood where she grew up, where her brother went missing when she was 14, where she lived when his body was found, and where she returned after becoming a mother. North End Love Songs is Katherena's first book and won the 2013 Governor General's Literary Award for English Poetry.

Fiction nominee Kenneth Bonert's The Lion Seeker is a powerful historical novel set between the two world wars that brings to life the South African Jewry, particularly the lives of Isaac Helger and his mother as they struggle for love, success, and to make the right choices in a sometimes impossible world. The Lion Seeker is Kenneth Bonert’s first novel, the only title chosen for the 2013 Knopf Random House’s “New Face of Fiction” list, and was nominated for the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for English Fiction.

Non-Fiction nominee Carolyn Abraham's The Juggler's Children is a mesh or memoir and journalism: the entwining of the family history, and the romance and intrigue of her nomadic great-grandfathers – a sea captain and a circus juggler – with scientific investigation allows for a nuanced and accessible narrative about where we come from, who we are, and the difference between the two. The Juggler's Children is Carolyn's second book and her second nomination for the Governor General's Literary Award for English Language Non-Fiction.

Tickets are on sale from the Grand Theatre Box Office.