University of Toronto

ALL WELCOME

Fridays, 3-4pm, Bader Theatre, Victoria University, 93 Charles St. West

Hosted by Nick Mount, Department of English, University of Toronto

Lynn Crosbie 29 January

“Not since Margaret Atwood’s Power Politics has the love poem been this honest, this intelligent, this gripping. Imagine yourself in the middle of an autopsy, only to find the heart still beating.”

—Michael Turner, author of Hard Core Logo

Montreal-born Lynn Crosbie is the author of five books of poetry, including Queen Rat, Missing Children, and our featured work, Liar (Anansi, 2006), a confessional poem about the mother of all breakups. She is also the author of two controversial novels, Paul’s Case, based on the Bernardo-Homolka sex crimes, and Dorothy L’Amour, inspired by the murder of Playmate Dorothy Stratten. Crosbie writes the “Pop Rocks” column for the Globe and Mail.

Stephen Marche 5 March

“With Raymond and Hannah I knew this guy was up to something brilliant. Shining at the Bottom of the Sea tells me I hadn't the faintest idea.”

—Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket

Stephen Marche published his first novel in 2005, the long-distance, digital love story of Raymond and Hannah. Our featured work is Marche’s second book, the anthology of an imaginary island nation called Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (Viking Canada, 2007). The New York Times Book Review called it “Maybe the most exciting mashup of literary genres since David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.” Marche lives in Toronto and is a columnist for the National Post and Esquire.

Jon McGregor 19 March

"A sensationally accomplished debut…a convincing and moving vision of contemporary Britain."

—Sunday Times

Born in Bermuda, British author Jon McGregor landed in Nottingham, where he wrote his first and our featured novel, the story of one street somewhere in the North of England. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (Bloomsbury, 2002) made McGregor the youngest contender and the only first novelist for the 2002 Booker Prize. It won the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been selected by Waterstone’s Books as one of their top 100 books of the last 25 years.