Join authors Ter i Vlassopoulos and Lindsay Zier-Vogel as they discuss their complementary new novels&mdash\;Living Expenses and The Fun Times Bri gade&mdash\;touching on themes of motherhood\, early adulthood\, and complex close relationships.
\nPresented in partnership with Wor ds Worth Books.
\nAs th
e children of a single mother who immigrated from the Philippines\, Laura
and Claire have always been exceptionally close. That is\, until Claire mo
ves to San Francisco for a startup job in Silicon Valley while Laura and h
er husband remain in Toronto and decide to start a family. Enter the slow\
, hopeful\, devastating process of fertility treatments. While Laura prepa
res for IVF\, Claire has her own encounter with the fertility industry.
Teri Vlassopoul os \;is the author of Living Expenses (Invisible Publishi ng\, 2025)\, Escape Plans (Invisible Publishing\, 2015) and B ats or Swallows (Invisible Publishing\, 2010). Her fiction and non-fi ction has been published in Room Magazine\, Today&rsquo\;s Pa rent\, Catapult\, The Millions\, The Rumpus\, The Toast\, Open Book and more. She has been nominat ed for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. In addition to writing\, Teri sits on the Board of Directors of the FOLD (the Festival of Literary Diversity ). She lives in Toronto.
\nFrom acclaimed author Lindsay Zier-Vogel comes an insightful and hea rt-rending exploration of motherhood\, grief\, and the search for identity . Amy is a new mother\, navigating the fog of those bewildering early days and struggling with a role she feels ill-prepared for. It&rsquo\;s the fi rst time in a decade that she hasn&rsquo\;t been living the busy life of a successful children&rsquo\;s musician\, and her sense of self is unravell ing. To make matters worse\, her former bandmates have seemingly abandoned her. In flashbacks\, we see Amy&rsquo\;s journey to artistic success&mdas h\;her stumblings as a solo singer-songwriter and her eventual evolution i nto acclaim as a children&rsquo\;s entertainer. But as the novel progresse s&mdash\;and Amy grapples with a devastating loss&mdash\;we come to unders tand how precarious definitions of artistic success can be and how hard it is to truly find our place in the world. The Fun Times Brigade e xamines the enduring challenges of reconciling being an artist with being a mother\, and how we ultimately fail and find the need to forgive those w e love. It is also a timely reflection on what it really means to have a g ood life in a world that demands we have&mdash\;and be&mdash\;it all\, and asserts that amidst the chaos\, we can find our way back to our genuine s elves.
\nLindsay Zier-Vogel \;is a Toronto-based author and the creator of the internationally beloved Love Lettering Project. After studying contemporary dance\, Zier-Vogel re ceived her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. She is t he author of the acclaimed novel Letters to Amelia\, and her firs t picturebook\, Dear Street was a Junior Library Guild pick\, a C anadian Children&rsquo\;s Book Centre book of the year\, and was nominated for a Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award in 2024. The Fun Times Brig ade is her second novel.
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