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A Discussion with Authors N. Whitlock & K. Kuitenbrouwer

in partnership with Wordsworth Books

IN PERSON, REGISTERED

Join us for a fascinating night of conversation as authors Nathan Whitlock (Lump) and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer (Wait Softly Brother) discuss their new books.

Presented in partnership with Words Worth Books.

About Nathan Whitlock:

Nathan Whitlock is the author of the novels A Week of This, Congratulations On Everything, and the upcoming Lump. Nathan’s writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The Walrus, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, The Globe and Mail, Best Canadian Essays, and elsewhere. He is the coordinator for Humber College’s Creative Book Publishing program, which he also teaches in, and makes the weekly author-interview podcast What Happened Next. He lives with his wife, award-winning author Meaghan Strimas, and their family in Hamilton, Ontario.

About Lump:

A dark, satiric novel about a woman whose attempt to escape crises in her health and marriage ends up causing more chaos.

Cat's career has stalled, her marriage has gone flat, and being a stay-at-home mom for two young kids has become a grind. When she finds out, all within a few days, that she is pregnant, that a lump in her breast is the worst thing it could be, and that her husband has done something unforgivably repulsive, she responds by running away from her marriage and her life — a life that, on the outside, looks like middle-class success. Her actions send waves of chaos through the lives of multiple characters, including a struggling house cleaner, a rich and charismatic yoga guru, and even an ailing dog. What follows is a dark comedy about marriage, motherhood, privilege, and power.

Picked by the Toronto Star as one of the "20 best books to pile by your hammock".

About Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer:

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the bestselling author of the novels All the Broken Things, Perfecting and The Nettle Spinner. She is also the author of the story collection, Way Up. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Walrus, Maclean’s, The Lifted Brow, Significant Objects, Storyville and others. Kathryn teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Toronto.

About Wait Softly Brother:

From lost siblings to the horrors of war to tales of selkie wives, Wait Softly Brother is filled with questions about memory, reality and the truths hidden in family lore.

After twenty years of looping frustrations Kathryn walks out of her marriage and washes up in her childhood home determined to write her way to a new life. There she is put to work by her aging parents sorting generations of memories and mementos as biblical rains fall steadily and the house is slowly cut off from the rest of the world. Lured away from the story she is determined to write – that of her stillborn brother, Wulf – by her mother’s gift of crumbling letters, Kathryn instead begins to piece together the strange tale of an earlier ancestor, Russell Boyt, who fought as a substitute soldier in the American Civil War. As the water rises, and more truths come to the surface, the two stories begin to mingle in unexpected and beautiful ways. In this elegantly written novel Kuitenbrouwer deftly unravels the stories we are told to believe by society and shows the reader how to weave new tales of hope and possibility.

Programmer: Nancy