Incite: September 28
Incite
7:30pm on Wednesday, September 28
Admission is free*
Alice MacKay room, Central Library
Vancouver-based ER Physician and author of five medical thrillers, Daniel Kalla, discusses his latest book The Far Side of the Sky. BC author, Ashley Little reads from her debut novel PRICK: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist and winner of the 2011 CAA Poetry Award Julia McCarthy reads from Return from Erebus.
*Please let us know you are attending by registering in advance. Please note that registration is so that we know how many people to expect. Admission on the night is always on a first-come-first-served basis.
The Writers
Daniel Kalla breaks away from his series of medical thrillers to bring readers a new work of historical fiction. The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish Second World War history, where cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of the everyday quest for survival.
On November 9, 1938—Kristallnacht—the Nazis unleash a night of terror across Germany that paves the way for Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Meanwhile, the Japanese Imperial Army continues to rampage through China and tighten its stranglehold on Shanghai, a besieged and divided city that becomes the last haven for thousands of desperate European Jews.
Dr. Franz Adler, an Austrian Jew and renowned surgeon, is swept up in the wave of anti-Semitic violence washing over Vienna and flees to China with his daughter. The danger escalates for Shanghai’s Jewish refugee community as the Japanese ally themselves militarily with Germany and attack Pearl Harbor. Soon, the Japanese overrun the European enclaves within Shanghai. Facing starvation, disease and the threat of internment—or worse—Franz struggles to keep the refugee hospital open while protecting his own family and fights to outwit the Nazis and save the city’s Jewish community from a terrible fate.
Julia McCarthy
Erebus, the dark and shadowy outer realm of the Underworld in Greek mythology, becomes a place of transition and becoming in Julia McCarthy’s Return from Erebus. The poems articulate this darkness with such keen and evocative vision and language that it appears to be made of light; they explore the richness of being, the ephemeral nature of our experience, and its inherent grief
Ashley Little
In her debut novel, Ashley Little follows in the footsteps of Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk to create a new anti-hero—one whose audacity is matched by his vulnerability.
PRICK is narrated by twenty-one year old Anthony “Ant” Young: an artist, an asshole, an anti-hero. After fleeing a violent home life in Calgary, Ant moves to Victoria, BC, where he earns his tattooing apprenticeship under Hank the Tank, a founding member of the powerful Lucifer’s Choice motorcycle gang. Under Hank’s guidance, Ant learns the craft and business of tattoo, but he is also exposed to a vicious and frightening criminal underworld. Written in intense, rapid-fire bursts, PRICK explores themes of addiction, desire, and remorse. As Ant’s life spirals out of control, he struggles to hold on to the one thing he really cares about in this unforgettable, disturbing, and darkly funny tale.
