Caroline Adderson (A Way to Be Happy) we be joining the AfterWords Festival’s event, “Open Secrets.”
When Andrea Skinner wrote in the Toronto Star about being assaulted by her stepfather when she was a child, and about how her mother chose to stay with the man instead of to stand by her daughter, many survivors saw their own experience reflected in her story and felt the reverberations. At the same time, Alice Munro’s daughters asked readers to continue engaging with their mother’s work, but through a new lens.
In this two-part conversation, Caroline Adderson, Heather O’Neill, and Deepa Rajagoplan join journalist Sarah Hampson to talk about how they’re reading Alice Munro now. Then, poet Sue Goyette presents new and recent work that dives deeply into her own experience in an unsafe house, and how trauma moves through image and language on the page.
The event will take place on Thursday, November 8 at 12:30PM.
Proceeds for this event go to Avalon Sexual Assault Centre. Content note: CSA
Registration and more details here.
Get A Way to Be Happy here!
Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize
Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.
On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.
Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels (A Russian Sister, Ellen in Pieces, The Sky Is Falling, Sitting Practice, and A History of Forgetting), two previous collections of short stories (Pleased to Meet You and Bad Imaginings), as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.
