May 25
2022
Join award-winning authors Michelle Berry, Frank Flynn, Charlie Petch, Kate Story, and PJ Thomas for an intimate evening of reading and conversation.
Award-winning author Michelle Berry (appearing on video for this reading) is the author
of three books of short stories and six novels, most recently the gripping Everything
Turns Away. Her short story collection I Still Don’t Even Know You won the 2011 Mary Scorer Award for Best Book Published by a Manitoba Publisher and was shortlisted for a 2011 ReLit Award, and her novel This Book Will Not Save Your Life won the 2010 Colophon Award and was longlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. Her writing has been optioned for film and published in the UK.
Local playwright and choreographer Frank Flynn’s debut novel Songs of the Sabbath is set in the late 1930s and early 1940s, weaving a compelling story of faith, hope, and the indomitable human spirit. His theatre productions have been performed in Canada, the United States, Britain, New Zealand, and South Korea, his plays published by Lazy Bee Scripts in Southampton, England, and his choreography productions have appeared in the 4th Line Digital Festival of Light and Dark, Art for Awareness, and the Small Dance for Small Space Festival at The Theatre on King.
Charlie Petch is an award-winning transmasculine multidisciplinary artist, mentor, keynote speaker, film/theatre lighting designer, sound tech & entertainer. Their new full-length poetry book Why I Was Late; is winner of the 2022 ReLit Award for Poetry. With kitchen-table candor and empathy, this stunning debut collection of poems offers witness to a decades-long trans/personal coming of age, finding heroes in unexpected places.
Kate Story is an award-winning genderqueer writer and theatre artist. Her latest novel, Urchin, mixes H.G. Wells and Guglielmo Marconi on the south side of St. John’s. Ranked by CBC as one of 22 Canadian YA books to watch out for; top 2022 selection by Top Grade: CanLit for the Classroom; listed in the Globe and Mail’s Children’s Book Gift Guide; highly recommended by the Association of Canadian Independent Booksellers.
Urchin was reviewed by Lisa Moore as:
“…electric with magic, glittering language, and high-wire tension… Here’s a queer, ultra-modern, historic St. John’s, where scientific advancement smacks up against potent magic and ancient lore. Sparks fly. Prepare to be zapped with high-voltage suspense and megawatts of fun. Prepare to be spellbound.”
PJ Thomas is a settler who was born and raised on Lake Ontario. She is a senior emerging poet who published her first book of poetry, Undertow, in October 2020. Thomas also writes lyrics, and three of her songs appear on the 2021 Juno-nominated album, Solar Powered Too. Her poetry appears in the 2022 Bill Bissett anthology, Poemdemic, and has been published in the River Magazine, the Arthur Newspaper, and by the Poet Laureate of Cobourg in the online publication, Poetry Present. Ms. Thomas makes her home with her beloved cat by the Otonabee River.