Ann-Marie MacDonald & Beth Powning Reading

Ann-Marie MacDonald & Beth Powning Reading

Ann-Marie MacDonald and Beth Powning will read, take questions, and sign books at the Ted Daigle Auditorium in Room 101 of the Brian Mulroney Building at St Thomas University on Thursday September 16th at 8pm, as part of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick’s (WFNB) annual Alden Nowlan Literary Festival.

Anne-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald is a novelist, playwright and actor, and the author of the acclaimed play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet).

Her first novel, Fall On Your Knees, became an international best-seller in 1996, published in 21 countries. Winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book and numerous other literary awards, it also became a selection of Oprah’s Book Club.

MacDonald’s #1 National Best-seller, The Way the Crow Flies, was short-listed for the Giller Prize and a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. She was a finalist for the CBA Libris Author of the Year Award and the novel won the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award.

Available in paperback from Vintage Canada, Maclean’s Magazine called it, “A mesmerising recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood…rendered with beauty and passion.”

In The Way the Crow Flies, MacDonald takes us back to the early 1960s, a time of optimism infused with the excitement of the space race and overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War, a world filtered through the imagination of Madeleine, a spirited eight-year-old. Unaware that her father is caught up in his own web of secrets, she welcomes her family’s posting to a sleepy air force base in Ontario. Then tragedy strikes, and a local murder intersects with global forces.

With her unerring eye for the whimsical, the absurd and the quintessentially human, MacDonald evokes the pain, confusion and humour of childhood in a perilous adult world.

Beth Powning

Throughout her diverse career, New Brunswick’s Beth Powning has always gone below the surface to reveal the great beauty and fragility of the world that surrounds her.

This fall, Beth Powning debuts as a novelist with a work of remarkable power and maturity. Published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, The Hatbox Letters is the moving story of one woman’s journey from grief to renewal as she discovers solace and purpose in the ever-shifting layers of memory.

It has been over a year since the sudden death of her husband, and Kate Harding is still reeling from the unbearable loss. She seems to be enduring her life rather than living it. With both of her children grown and on their own, the sprawling Victorian house where every room reminds her of Tom overwhelms Kate.

Little does she know, but the arrival of nine antique hatboxes will forever change what Kate has always believed about her family’s past. The hatboxes delivered from the Connecticut home of Kate’s late grandparents are filled with letters, papers, diaries and photographs.

As Kate works her way through the past, hatbox by hatbox, the letters reveal a remarkable story of two people who come together under the most unexpected of circumstances. Within the boxes are lessons on the strength and resiliency of the heart and spirit. They provide Kate with comfort and direction as she navigates her way back into the world.

Rich and deeply resonant, The Hatbox Letters is a novel about life’s joys and sorrows.

To access the complete schedule of events for the Alden Nowlan Literary Festival please contact the WFNB at (506) 459-7228 or by email at wfnb@nb.aibn.com or visit their website at http://www.umce.ca/wfnb.