Mennonite/s Writing 2014-2015: Miriam Toews

Building on its successful 2012 reading series, “Mennonite/s Writing: Celebrating the First 50 Years,” Conrad Grebel University College is pleased to present “Mennonite/s Writing 2014-2015,” a seven session reading series showcasing new work by some of the most prominent authors in the field, including: Rudy Wiebe, Jeff Gundy, Miriam Toews, Patrick Friesen, Di Brandt, David Bergen, and Carrie Snyder.

On Wednesday, November 26^th, Grebel will host Miriam Toews for the first time, as she reads from her bestselling new novel All My Puny Sorrows. Winner of the Governor General’s Award for A Complicated Kindness, Toews’ most recent novel returns to a cast of Mennonites with a tight-knit family wrestling through urgent questions of life, death, and the power to choose.

Miriam Toews is author of six novels, including A Boy of Good Breeding (winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year award); A Complicated Kindness (winner of the Governor General’s Award, and Canada Reads); The Flying Troutmans (winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust award), and a memoir, Swing Low. Her most recent novel is the 2014 bestseller All My Puny Sorrows.

The series will be hosted by Robert Zacharias, Assistant Editor of The Journal of Mennonite Studies and Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the English Department at the University of Waterloo. He is author of Rewriting the Break Event: Mennonites and Migration in Canadian Literature, and editor of After Identity: Mennonite/s Writing in North America, forthcoming from Penn State UP.

The New Mennonite/s Writing series at Conrad Grebel, which promises seven evenings of compelling literature with some of Canada’s most celebrated authors, is an exciting opportunity for readers and book clubs alike.

Everyone is welcome; admission is free.