Fiction writer, playwright and journalist Padma Viswanathan will be the first author featured in the 17th annual instalment of the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series at York University. She will appear on Sept. 22 from 7 to 10pm at 206 Accolade West Building.
Viswanathan will read from her internationally acclaimed new work The Ever After of Ashwin Rao. Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2014, the fictional tale explores culture, politics and tragedy when it delves into the lives of families who lost loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing.
Viswanathan is from Edmonton, Alta., and has an MA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins and MFA from the University of Arizona. She is currently based in Fayetteville, Ark. Her past accomplishments include residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Banff Playwrights’ Colony, as well as a first-place distinction in the 2006 Boston Review Short Story Contest for her work Transitory Cities.
Her first novel, The Toss of a Lemon, was a Commonwealth (Regional) First Book Prize winner, an Amazon.ca First Novel Prize winner and a Pen Centre USA Fiction Prize winner. It was published in eight countries and listed as a bestseller in three countries.
Viswanathan has also contributed her writing to various magazines and news publications.
The Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series is presented by the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and this year brings 11 Canadian writers to campus for an up-close and personal event.
More events in the series include:
- Oct. 6 – Kim Thuy, Mãn
- Oct. 20 – Frances Itani, Tell
- Nov. 3 – Greg Hollingshead, Act Normal
- Nov. 17 – Sean Michaels, Us Conductors
- Dec. 1 – Lee Maracle, Celia’s Song
- Jan. 12 – Heather O’Neill, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
- Jan. 26 – Gregory Scofield, Louis: The Heretic Poems
- Feb. 9 – Colin McAdam, A Beautiful Truth
- March 1 – Sue Goyette, Ocean
- March 15 – Aisha Sasha John, Thou
For more information, email gailv@yorku.ca or leslie@yorku.ca.