Program Guide in pdf - Vancouver International Writers Festival

20
FRUITS OF LABOUR
KATIE SMITH MILWAY
1 – 2:30 PM
PTC STUDIO
$17 / $8.50 FOR STUDENT GROUPS
For many Vancouver-area children, growing a garden
in the backyard is fun and pulling a carrot out of the
ground is a treat. But when 11-year-old Maria, part of a
struggling farming family in Honduras, is left in charge
of the garden, her family’s very survival depends on her
work. When her teacher introduces her to sustainable
farming practices, however, she can begin to transform
and improve the life of her family and her community.
Through rich illustrations and tales of her experiences
in Latin America, Katie Smith Milway shows children
ways they, too, can be part of “good gardens” at home
and abroad.
Suitable for grades 2 to 5
This event is sponsored by the
Rix Family Foundation.
SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
EMMA DONOGHUE, PASCALE QUIVIGER, ROBERT J. WIERSEMA,
KATHLEEN WINTER
8:00 PM
WATERFRONT THEATRE
$19
The complex love between parent and child provides
ample ground for novelists. Four Canadian writers have
each taken a different tack on this theme in their new
works. Emma Donoghue’s fi ve-year-old narrator is
trapped in a single room with his mother, while Kathleen
Winter’s subject is trapped in a body that is neither
fully male nor female. Pascale Quiviger and Robert J.
Wiersema approach the theme of the parent-child bond
by taking forays into the worlds of the fantastic and the
imagination. But all four paint compelling portraits that
show us the inescapable truth that who you are depends
largely on how you were raised.
18 THE BIG IDEA 19
ANDREA LEVY, CLAUDIO MAGRIS, YANN MARTEL, ANDREW O’HAGAN
HOST: MERILYN SIMONDS
8:00 PM
PERFORMANCE WORKS
$19
Put four deep thinkers on the same stage, each
armed with a new novel and big ideas, and you’ve
got the makings of a great evening. Orange Prize
winner Andrea Levy and Man Booker Prize winner
Yann Martel join one of Europe’s leading cultural
philosophers, Claudio Magris, who has won the
Premio Viaregio Tobino (writer of the year) and Andrew
O’Hagan, who has been shortlisted for the Booker, the
IMPAC Dublin and the Whitbread. Their novels tackle big
ideas from the Holocaust to slavery to American culture
to the nature of revolution. This is a quintessential
Writers Festival event that will draw the best from the
world’s leading writers.
20 21
AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH
JANE URQUHART
8:00 PM
PTC STUDIO
$25
When Governor General’s Award–winning novelist Jane
Urquhart fi nishes writing a novel, she says she never
knows whether another one is going to happen; it always
seems like an act of such “unlikely magic”. Luckily
for her readers, this magic occurs quite regularly. In
Sanctuary Line, as in her six previous novels, Urquhart’s
lyrical confi dence sings as loudly as ever. The tale,
weaving elements from nineteenth-century Ireland and
Ontario into gradually unfolding contemporary events
in the lives of one family, also threads together three
different but very powerful love stories. Tonight is a rare
opportunity to sit with a Canadian master and indulge in
the art of her smooth prose.