The Arts Council spring reading series concludes with prairie novelist Sandra Birdsell in Sechelt on Friday, May 20.
As Michael Ondaatje says, Birdsell is one of Canada's best writers, yet you may not have heard much about her because she does not enter enthusiastically into the promotional activities that draw public attention.
Her work has regularly won awards, including Saskatchewan and Manitoba Book Awards, as well as nominations for the Giller, the Dublin IMPAC and (three times) the Governor General's awards.
She has recently been appointed to the Order of Canada.
Born in Manitoba, Birdsell emerged as a mature talent in her early short stories found in the 1987 volume Agassiz Stories. Her fiction, including seven novels, is informed by a sense of pioneer history sharpened by the tensions between her Métis and Mennonite backgrounds. Her latest novel, Waiting For Joe, is about the challenges of life in an immediately contemporary prairie West.
A prairie girl at heart, Birdsell admits to overcoming an initial suspicion that we're all a bit mad out here, but she is delighted to read for us, so come out and welcome her.
That's at 8 p.m., May 20, at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt. Admission is free, courtesy of the Canada Council.
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