Join us for an e vening with authors Karen Smythe and Kasia Jaronczyk as they discuss their newest releases\, A Town With No Noise (Karen Smythe) and Voices in the Air (Kasia Jaronczyk).
\nPresen ted in partnership with Words Worth Books.
\nKaren Smythe is the author of the novel This Side of Sad (Goose Lane Editions\, 2017)\, the story collection Stubborn Bones (Polestar/Raincoast\, 2001)\, and the critical study Figuring Grie f: Gallant\, Munro\, and the Poetics of Elegy (McGill-Queen&rsquo\;s U.P.\, 1992). She lives in Guelph\, Ontario.
\nSamara and J.\, a struggling young couple\, are o ff to J.&rsquo\;s birthplace\, Upton Bay\, a small town turned upscale the atre and winery destination. Sam has been \;hired by an editor friend to write a \;promotional piece about the place while she and J. stay w ith his grandfather Otto\, a prominent businessman in his day.
\nBut their visit does not go as planned. \;Sam&rsquo\;s explorations of Up ton&rsquo\;s tourist attractions lead her to ugly truths behind the quaint little town&rsquo\;s faç\;ade&mdash\;discoveries that are counterpo inted with vignettes of the town&rsquo\;s wealthy\, elderly ruling class\, painting a different picture than the one Sam&rsquo\;s friend expects her to provide. \;Tensions between Sam and J. worsen as J.&rsquo\;s true nature emerges and Sam begins to question both his values and his family&r squo\;s past&mdash\;especially after \;Otto tells them stories about h is time as a German soldier during WW2.
\nBack in the city\, Sam&rsq uo\;s \;opinions \;and judgments about what is right and wrong are tested when a shocking truth surfaces about her grandmother&rsquo\;s flig ht from Norway \;after the war\, profoundly \;changing Sam's under standing of who she is and who she wants to become.
\nIn \;A Town with No Noise\, \;fact and fiction combine to ask difficult questions about the communities we build\, questions that are as relevant today as ever: \;Who stays? Who is chased away? And who decides?
\ nKasia Jaronczyk is a Polish-Canadian w riter\, artist and microbiologist. She immigrated to Canada at the age of 14. Her debut short story collection Lemons was published in 2017 by Mansfield Press. She is a co-editor of the only anthology of Polish-Ca nadian short stories Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction&nbs p\;(Guernica Editions\, 2017). Her stories were short-listed for the Bristol Prize 2016 and long-listed for CBC Short Story Prize 2010. She has published in Canadian literary magazines such as TNQ\, Room< /em>\, Prairie Journal\, Carousel\, The Nashwaak Rev iew\, Postscripts to Darkness\, and in anthologies Where ver I Find Myself\, Essays by Canadian Immigrant Women (Miriam Matejo va\, Ed. Caitlin Press\, April 2017) and The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology \;(2016. Vol 9.).
\nWhat would drive women to risk the lives of their children and innocent people to leave their mother country forever?
\nOn Apri l 30\, 1982\, two women and their families hijack a \;Polish passenger plane \;flying from Breslau to Warsaw in a bold attempt to escape&nbs p\;Martial Law in Communist Poland \;and find safety in West Berlin.&n bsp\;Among the hijackers are a cotton spinner whose husband wants to avoid a long prison sentence\, a schoolteacher with a sick daughter\, a pregnan t fourteen-year-old who has visions of the Virgin Mary\, and an ambitious young filmmaker. \;Inspired by real events\, Voices in the Air is told from the point of view of these four women and a stewardess in love with the married pilot. \; \;Will they find happiness beyond the Iron C urtain or was the hijacking not worth the risk?
\nTold using traditi onal narrative and documentary \;film-style interviews\, Voices in the Air \;follows the main characters&rsquo\; lives before and a fter the hijacking\, and through \;real-life events as the fall of the Berlin Wall\, the fight for women&rsquo\;s rights in modern Poland\, the Covid pandemic and the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarus border. A must -read novel exploring \;ambiguous \;moral choice\, censorship\, em igration\, fate \;and regret.
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