40 Women and Literature

Gillian Jerome British Columbia	Gail Jones Australia	Kate Mosse United Kingdom
Susan Swan Ontario

Gillian Jerome, British Columbia

Gillian Jerome’s first book of non-fiction Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (with Brad Cran) won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award and was shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize in British Columbia. Her first book of poems, Red Nest,was nominated for the 2009 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and won the 2009 ReLit Award for Poetry. Read more

Gail Jones, Australia

Gail Jones is the author of the novels Black Mirror, Sixty Lights, Dreams of Speaking and Sorry. She has been nominated for numerous international awards, including the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Fémina Étranger. She is a professor of writing at the University of Western Sydney. Her new novel is Five Bells. Read more

Kate Mosse, United Kingdom

Kate Mosse is the author of two non-fiction books, two plays and five novels, including the multi-million-selling international bestseller Labyrinth. The first of her Languedoc trilogy, it was translated into 37 languages and published in 40 countries. The second in the series, Sepulchre, was also a #1 bestseller, as was her novella The Winter Ghosts. The third Languedoc novel, Citadel, has just been published. Read more

Susan Swan, Ontario

Susan Swan’s last novel, What Casanova Told Me, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her other novels include The Wives of Bath (which was made into the feature film Lost and Delirious), The Biggest Modern Woman of the World (finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Governor General’s Award), The Last of the Golden Girls and the short story collection Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With. Her new novel is The Western Light. Read more

Thursday, October 18, 2012 - 8:00pm
Waterfront Theatre
$19

In response to the 1991 Booker Prize nominee list, which included not one female author, novelist Kate Mosse founded the Orange Prize to celebrate outstanding fiction by women throughout the world. Now, more than 20 years later, poet Gillian Jerome has founded Canadian Women in the Literary Arts in response to the critical reception of women’s creative writing. In this so-called post-feminist world, does the literary and critical environment reflect what’s really happening? Susan Swan, novelist and past chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada, has followed issues of gender equality in writing for decades. Australia’s Gail Jones, an award-winning author and professor of writing, brings an international perspective to this panel discussion.