Join us to welco me award-winning Canadian authors Vivek Shreya and Té\;a Mutonji as they discuss their newest releases\, The Hystericals by Vivek Shraya and My Person by \;Té\;a Mutonj i. Books will be available for purchase and a signing will follow the even t.
\nPresented in partnership with Words Worth Books.
\nFrom the bestselling author of I&rsquo\;m Afraid of Men \;comes \;a propulsive and chilling novel for the post-#MeToo era\, set in an isolationist state where one wom an&rsquo\;s death sparks a movement that could liberate women or destroy t hem all.
\nWhen Sarah Munroe is sexually assaulted on her university campus and her attacker walks free\, she makes a devastating choice: she publicly takes her own life in a final act of defiance against a regime th at has stripped women of their rights.
\nHer final message ignites a radical movement called #FreeToo. Soon\, masses of women are taking up &l dquo\;Sarah&rsquo\;s Call&rdquo\; and &ldquo\;freeing&rdquo\; themselves a s extreme acts of protest. As these deaths multiply across the state\, the government declares the movement a contagion. Overnight\, all women are r eclassified as &ldquo\;hystericals.&rdquo\; \;
\nForced into a n ew reality where her very existence is criminalized\, Sarah&rsquo\;s siste r\, Kennedy\, struggles with her own grief\, guilt\, and anger. And as the regime tightens its grip\, she will have to reckon with her sister&rsquo\ ;s legacy&mdash\;and decide whether to surrender or survive.
\nVivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work cross es the boundaries of music\, literature\, visual art\, theatre\, TV\, film \, and fashion. A three-time Canadian Screen Award winner\, Vivek is the c reator and writer of the CBC Gem Original Series How to Fail as a Popstar\ , which had its international premiere at Cannes. She was nominated for th e Polaris Music Prize and has collaborated with musical icons Jann Arden\, Peaches\, and Jully Black. Her best-selling book I&rsquo\;m Afraid of Men was heralded by Vanity Fair as &ldquo\;cultural rocket fuel.&rdquo\; Vive k has been a brand ambassador for MAC Cosmetics and Pantene\, a guest host on The Social and CBC&rsquo\;s q\, and she is a director on the board of the Tegan and Sara Foundation.
\nIntimate and sharply funny\, My Person \;is a bold debut nove l following two lifelong friends who suddenly find themselves in an emotio nal deadlock when one abruptly proposes to break up after years of subtle betrayals\, from \;Té\;a Mutonji\, author of Shut Up You're Pretty \;and one of Canada&rsquo\;s most exciting writers.
\n< p>Best friends of over twenty years\, Tania and Margot are preparing to ho st their monthly Sunday Loaf dinner party\, when Tania tells Margot this i sn&rsquo\;t working for her anymore&mdash\;they&rsquo\;ve been entangled f or too long and she wants to "unknow" her. But how do you extricate yourse lf from someone whose family owns the apartment you live in\, who has take n you in as their own\, even claims you as their "person&rdquo\;?\nAs Tania attempts to live her life loudly on the outskirts of Margot&rsquo \;s bubble\, Margot&rsquo\;s past betrayals become increasingly clear. But she means well\, doesn&rsquo\;t she? They&rsquo\;d felt like sisters from the start. Or had Tania just been blind to Margot&rsquo\;s antics?
\n< p>Set in the framework of a tense will-they-won&rsquo\;t-they break-up\, T ania and Margot get entangled in a rigorous revision of history\, their on ce delicate dance intensifying toward a frantic finale and forcing them to reckon with where it all went wrong . . . or whether they were simply wro ng for each other to begin with.\nA taut\, piercing exploration of race and privilege\, codependency and the ways in which world-defining fri endships can be both beautifully and excruciatingly \;life-altering\, My Person \;is an addicting\, astutely observed novel from a major tal ent.
\nTé\;a Mutonji is a poet and fiction writer. Her debut collection of short stories\, Shut Up You&rsquo\;re Pretty \;was a finalist for the Atwood Gibson Wr iters&rsquo\; Trust Fiction Prize (2019) and Canada Reads \;(2024). It won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award (2020) and the Trillium Book Awa rd (2020). Mutonji was a recipient of the Writers' Trust Rising Stars awar d (2022) and received the Jill Davis Fellowship (2021) at New York Univers ity where she completed her MFA in fiction.
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\nStaff: Nancy
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