9th Annual Lit On Tour

On Tuesday, November 5th, head to the Thunder Bay Art Gallery for the Toronto International Festival of Author’s (TIFA)’s 9th annual Lit On Tour event here in Thunder Bay. Lit On Tour brings the world’s best authors of contemporary literature to various events across Ontario.  Lakehead University, the Northwestern Ontario Writers’ Workshop (NOWW), the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, CBC Radio and the Thunder Bay Public Library have once again partnered with TIFA; this year we’ll be hosting a diverse trio of authors: Rune Christiansen, author of Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest, Ann Hui, author of Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants, and Linden MacIntyre, author of The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami.  Tickets cost $15 and are available at all library locations and at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery until November 5th when they will only be available at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

Here’s a little more about the three authors who are coming to Thunder Bay this year (courtesy of litontour.com):

Rune Christiansen is a Norwegian poet and novelist. One of Norway’s most important literary writers, he is the author of more than 20 books of fiction, poetry and nonfiction. He has won many prestigious awards, including the 2014 Brage Prize for his bestselling novel, The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life. Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest, translated by Kari Dickson, was a finalist for the 2017 Brage Prize, and is his first book to appear in English. Christiansen is also a professor of creative writing. Rune lives just outside of Oslo, Norway. His appearance is supported by NORLA – Norwegian Literature Abroad.

Ann Hui has been The Globe and Mail’s national food reporter since 2015. Her work has included investigations into the role of lobbying in the development of Canada’s Food Guide, and a 2018 story that uncovered widespread sexual harassment in one of the country’s most prominent wineries. Previously, she covered Toronto politics and national news.  Hui has written for The Walrus, National Post, Toronto Star and Victoria Times Colonist and has twice been nominated for National Newspaper Awards. She has a master of journalism from Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia.

Linden Macintyre hosted Canada’s premiere investigative TV show, The Fifth Estate, for nearly 25 years, where he garnered an International Emmy and ten Gemini Awards. Born in Newfoundland and raised in Cape Breton, his career began as a parliamentary bureau reporter with the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. He later worked at The Journal and hosted CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning. His first novel, The Long Stretch, was nominated for a CBA Libris Award, while his boyhood memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, was a Globe and Mail Best Book and won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award. His second novel, The Bishop’s Man, was a national bestseller and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award.

For more information on this event, please visit TIFA’s Lit On Tour website at litontour.com. You can also visit the Thunder Bay Public Library’s blog, TBPL Off the Shelf (tbplofftheshelf.com), to read interviews with Rune Christiansen and Ann Hui; an interview with Linden Macintyre will be available on the blog on October 30th.

Shauna Kosoris – www.tbpl.ca. If you have a comment about today’s column, we would love to hear from you. Please comment below!