CBC's 2008 Canada Reads competition nominee, Thomas Wharton, prize winning author of Icefields, will launch the Sunshine Coast Arts Council's spring reading series March 14 at 8 p.m.
Promoted by none other than Steve MacLean, chief astronaut of the Canadian Space Agency - the "only Canada Reads panelist who can claim he has walked in space' - Icefields garnered plenty of acclaim for Wharton when it was first published, winning the Writers Guild of Alberta best first book award, the Banff Book Festival grand prize and the Commonwealth Writer's prize for best first book, Canada/Caribbean division. Since then, Wharton's second novel, Salamander was short listed for the Governor-General's Literary Award and the Roger's Fiction Prize. A collection of short stories about reading, The Logogryph, was a finalist for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, which involves libraries from around the world and is open to books in any language.
Wharton was born in Grande Prairie, Alta., and attended the University of Alberta, where he was a student of Rudy Wiebe. Icefields began as his MA thesis, under the supervision of sometime Coast resident Kristjana Gunnars. He completed his PhD at the University of Calgary with novelist Aritha van Herk. Currently Wharton lives in Edmonton with his wife and three children.
This reading will take place in the Doris Crowston Gallery of the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre, corner of Trail and Medusa in Sechelt. Admission is free thanks to the generosity of the Canada Council for the Arts.
