Steven Price, the next author in the Fall Reading Series, has been acclaimed both as a poet and a novelist. His two poetry collections were awarded the Gerald Lampert Award and the Relit Award for Poetry. By Gaslight, his recent novel, was long-listed for the Giller Prize. He teaches at the University of Victoria.
Price’s first novel, Into That Darkness, describes in vivid detail a major earthquake in Victoria and its painful aftermath. Robert Wiersma describes it as “… a literary novel with the narrative momentum of genre or commercial writing.”
And the same applies to By Gaslight, which lavishly portrays the evils and filth of late 19th century London and the horrors of the U.S. civil war.
Into That Darkness and the poetry collection Omens in the Year of the Ox were written over the same period. Of them Price has said, “Each explores … the problem and impact of certain kinds of evil in the world.”
He confesses that he has little “interest in the idealized world” or “dreamy notions of poetry,” but it is evident in both his poetry and fiction that he loves language to “an almost physical level.”
Steven Price will be reading at the Arts Centre in Sechelt on Saturday, Nov. 11 at 8 p.m. These readings are sponsored by Canada Council for the Arts. Admission by donation.
– Submitted by Paddy Blenkinsop
