Long Story Short
with Bill Gaston, Catherine Bush and Andre Alexis
Hosted by Rhonda Douglas
Pure storytelling magic. André Alexis is alchemically, necromantically, spell-castingly talented, and yet he never uses his powers for ill: in all his playfulness, there is never any trace of gamesmanship. He's a writer who makes the world feel so much bigger than it really is—even bigger than he himself has imagined it—by always allowing for the possibility of transformation.”
Join us for a conversation on the essential elements of storytelling and the unique power of the short story with three of the country’s most acclaimed authors as we celebrate their new collections of short fiction.
Set on an island in BC's Salish Sea, Tunnel Island is a richly imagined and often hilarious collection of linked stories by Timothy Findley Award-winner Bill Gaston. Eleven stories unfold over a period of ten years, featuring a cast of characters striving to understand and overcome pasts that often include a catastrophic error: on Tunnel Island, moral misjudgements, semi-legal schemes, and antisocial gaffes abound.
Skin, the debut collection from acclaimed author Catherine Bush, summons the relationships between the human and more-than-human, and explores a world where touch and intimacy are both desirable and fraught. Ranging from the realistic to the speculative, these stories tackle the condition of our restless, unruly world amidst the tumult of viruses, climate change, and ecological crises.
In his latest book, Other Worlds: Stories, Ottawa’s own Andre Alexis, the award-winning author of Fifteen Dogs, draws fresh connections between worlds: the ones we occupy, the ones we imagine, and the ones that preceded our own. He introduces us to characters during moments of profound puzzlement, and transports us from 19th century Trinidad and Tobago to small-town Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to contemporary Toronto.
Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books.
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