As part of 49th Shelf's #Fest2Fest, Julie Wilson is speaking with authors across the country (and abroad) who are appearing at literary festivals to promote their latest books.
For all our #Fest2Fest updates, bookmark www.49thshelf.com/Festivals.
Annabel Lyon, author of The Sweet Girl (Random House Canada), will appear at the Vancouver Writers Fest.
For all details, go here.
This year's festival runs October 16-21, 2012.
Julie chatted via Annabel while she was in Toronto to promote The Sweet Girl. They blow up the stereotype of CanLit and discuss the origins of the perfectly-constructed sentence.
Enjoy the podcast!
About the book: Pythias is her father's daughter, with eyes his exact shade of unlovely, intelligent grey. A slave to his own curiosity and intellect, Aristotle has never been able to resist wit in another—even in a girl child who should be content with the kitchen, the loom, and a life dictated by the womb. And, oh, his little Pytho is smart, able to best his own students in debate and match wits with a roomful of Athenian philosophers. Is she a freak or a harbinger of what women can really be? Pythias must suffer that argument, but she is also (mostly) secure in her father's regard.
But then Alexander dies a thousand miles from Athens, and sentiment turns against anyone associated with him, most especially his famous Macedonian-born teacher. Aristotle and his family are forced to flee to Chalcis, a garrison town. Ailing, mourning and broken in spirit, Aristotle soon dies. And his orphaned daughter, only 16, finds out that the world is a place of superstition, not logic, and that a girl can be played upon by gods and goddesses, as much as by grown men and women. To safely journey to a place in which she can be everything she truly is, Aristotle's daughter will need every ounce of wit she possesses, but also grace and the capacity to love.
About the author: Annabel Lyon's story collection Oxygen and book of novellas The Best Thing for You, were published in Canada to wide acclaim. The Golden Mean, her first novel, was a Canadian bestseller and is being published in six languages. It won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her eagerly anticipated follow-up is The Sweet Girl. Lyon lives in New Westminster with her husband and two children.
About the Vancouver Writers Fest: For the past 25 years, the Vancouver Writers Fest turns reading into a community experience, bringing people together to share thoughts, explore ideas, and witness brilliant conversations.
The Festival is a celebration of story, told by authors, poets, spoken word performers, and graphic novelists.
For six days in October, this celebration takes place in the cultural oasis of Granville Island, and continues throughout the year with the Incite reading series at the VPL, special events with leading writers and the Spreading the Word education programs at Lower Mainland schools and in small BC communities.
Through Spreading the Word, the Festival can reignite a teacher’s passion for teaching, mesmerize a teenager who rarely looks up from her phone or engage a child who is a reluctant reader. Festival events can encourage discussion and reflection, and connect old friends and introduce new ones.
Ideas create books, but people create the Festival. The Writers Fest brings people of all backgrounds together—writers, children, adults, staff and hundreds of volunteers—all of whom love to read. They also love what reading represents: the stirring of ideas, the sparks of recognition, and the realization that we are all connected.
Follow them on Twitter as @VanWritersFest.