Karen Connelly, one of Canada’s best-known young writers and the youngest-ever Governor General’s Award recipient, will be speaking and reading from her new novel at UBC Okanagan on November 23.
Hosted by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, Connelly will read from The Lizard Cage (Random House 2005), and talk about her work. Students from the university’s creative writing classes will be among those attending the event, which is free and open to the public.
Connelly won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction in 1993, and authored the New York Times Notable Travel Book of the Year in 2002. She is the author of seven books of best-selling nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
Of Okanagan interest, Connelly won the 1990 National Kalamalka New Writers Contest – an award that included publication of her first book of poetry, The Small Words in My Body (Kalamalka Press). The Kalamalka New Writers Society is a collective of Vernon and Kelowna writers who established Kalamalka Press in 1987 to launch and run a national competition for a first book of poetry.
The Lizard Cage, which is Connelly’s debut novel, illuminates the tragic story of modern Burma by focusing on the lives of two people: a Burmese political prisoner and the child-labourer he befriends.
The reading is on Wednesday, November 23, 2005, at 7:30 p.m. in Arts 103, at UBC Okanagan. Everyone is welcome and admission is free.
-- 30 --