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 UPEI 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.
