Please join us for night two of the In Her Voice summer readings program. We will be joined by Katherine Ashenburg, Carrianne Leung, and Loren Edizel, who will be reading from their most recent works. Light refreshments will be served.

When:

August 14, 2018 @6-8pm

(Readings begin at 6:30)

Where:

Ben McNally Books

366 Bay Street

Cost:

Free!

Katherine Ashenburg is the author of three books and many magazine and newspaper articles. Her books include The Mourner’s Dance: What We Do When People Die, and The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History. In former incarnations, she was a producer at CBC Radio and was The Globe and Mail‘s Arts and Books editor.

A surprising, rich and beautiful first novel about women’s friendship for readers of Paula McLain and Elena Ferrante.

Here is a gorgeous gem of a book: surprising, unique, layered with insight into the nuances of female friendship as it stretches, changes, and deepens in unexpected ways over a lifetime. Woven effortlessly through this tapestry, like a beautiful motif, is absorbing detail about Scandinavian painting, design, and textile work; European history and sexual politics; the country life, city salons, vibrant art, and folklore of Sweden; and the secrets and challenges of bright, talented women juggling marriage, career, individual aspirations, and family life inside an artist’s household in the early twentieth century.

Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and educator. She holds a PhD in sociology and equity studies from the University of Toronto. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo, was shortlisted for a 2014 Toronto Book Award.

Life is never as perfect as it seems.

 The suburbs of the 1970s promised to be heaven on earth—new houses, new status, happiness guaranteed. But in a Scarborough subdivision populated by newcomers from all over the world, a series of sudden catastrophic events reveals that not everyone’s dreams come true. Moving from house to house, Carrianne Leung explores the inner lives behind the tidy front gardens and picture-perfect windows, always returning to June, an irrepressible adolescent Chinese-Canadian coming of age in this shifting world. Through June and her neighbours, Leung depicts the fine line where childhood meets the realities of adult life, and examines, with insight and sharp prose, how difficult it is to be true to ourselves at any age.

Loren Edizel was born in Izmir, Turkey, and has lived in Canada most of her life. She is the author of three novels, Adrift (2011) (long-listed for the ReLit Awards), The Ghosts of Smyrna (2013), and a collection of short stories, Confessions: A Book of Tales (2014). The Ghosts of Smyrna was also published in Turkish, in Turkey, in 2017. Her short fiction has appeared in journals in both Canada and in Turkey. She lives in Toronto with her family.

“Reading this novel was like sliding into a warm bath. It’s a luminous work, a love story that spans several decades. There is also much wisdom and insight to be found along the way. Reader, you are in for a treat.” —Morris Berman

Upon receiving a letter and a package of journals from a dying Mehtap, her mother Nuray’s close friend in Turkey, a young Toronto woman immerses herself in the old woman’s memories. She uncovers Mehtap’s story as a factory worker in the 1960s who is infatuated with her boss, a man she willingly lies for, and even wrap presents for that he gives to his mistress and his wife. When her friend, Nuray, moves in with her, something unexpected happens and Mehtap is forced to choose between her two loves. Mehtap’s story is interwoven with that of her parents, Cretan refugees who landed in Izmir in the mid-twenties as a result of the disastrous population exchange, only to discover an inescapable and tragic truth that shatters their lives. As Mehtap’s writings unfurl, Nuray’s daughter — Mehtap’s namesake — now the keeper of the journals, notebooks and letters written by her mother’s friend, also uncovers her own mother’s deeply-held secrets, furtive yearnings, and forbidden love.