Prize-winning poet and novelist Alison Pick, much-praised author of Far to Go, long-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, reads at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt, this Saturday, Dec. 1, at 8 p.m.
Far to Go is the moving story of a Jewish Czech family whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival in the Sudetenland of Hitler's army. The grandchild of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi horror, Pick represents a new generation of Canadians confronting the Holocaust, asking how what happened to our grandparents has affected who we are today.
What does it mean to cling to an identity when that identity is under attack? Or to discard the identity one was born with?Can divided loyalties ever be reconciled?
At the time of writing, Pick's many fans await the announcement Nov. 29 of whether Far to Go will be one of the five books chosen for this season's CBC Canada Reads competition. Currently it is one of the five Ontario contenders.
No stranger to awards, Pick's Far to Go won the Can-adian Jewish Book Award for fiction and was a Top 10 of 2010 Book at Now magazine and The Toronto Star.
Her first novel, The Sweet Edge, was a Globe & Mail Top 100 Book of 2005. Named in 2002 the Bronwen Wallace most promising writer under the age of 35, she went on to win the 2003 National Magazine Award for Poetry and the 2005 CBC Literary Award for poetry. Presently living in Toronto, Pick is working on a memoir.
Her reading will take place in the Doris Crowston Gallery at the Arts Centre. This is a free reading thanks to the generosity of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Sunshine Coast Arts Council.
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