Trigger Warning with Deni Bechard, Peter Behrens and Kevin Patterson

It is said that “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”  But how soundly do those “rough men” sleep? Join us for an evening of readings and conversations about the human cost of conflict and the nature of violence.

In his new novel, Into the Sun, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winner Deni Ellis Béchard explores the personal impact of America’s imperial misadventures and draws an unsentimental portrait of the journalists, mercenaries, messianic idealists, and aid workers who flock to war zones. In vivid and evocative prose, Béchard brings to life the city of Kabul itself, along with the people who live there: the hungry, determined, and resourceful locals who are just as willing as their occupiers to reinvent themselves to survive.

Governor-General’s Award-winner Peter Behrens returns with Carry Me, an unusual love story, an historical epic, and a lucid meditation on Europe’s violent twentieth century, transporting the reader from a golden Edwardian summer on the Isle of Wight, to London under Zeppelin attack, to Ireland on the brink of its War of Independence, and at last to Germany during the darkening Weimar period.

News From the Red Desert by Kevin Patterson, winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, begins in late 2001, when everyone believes the war is already won and the Taliban defeated, then leaps late in the severely escalated conflict–into the mess, into death and confusion. At its heart are the men and women who have come to Afghanistan to seek purpose, adventure and danger, by engaging in the most bewitching and treacherous of human pursuits: making war. 

Books available for purchase at every event: Proceeds support our free children’s literacy programs.