To Whom It May Concern
When was the first time you read King Lear? Does Shakespeare belong on the stage or on the page? Is ‘The Bard’ overrated? Linda Griffiths, Andrew Pyper, Anthony De Sa, Shyam Selvadurai and Deanne Williams shall address these questions in short monologues. Celebrated author Priscila Uppal will discuss how she used King Lear as a starting point for her latest novel, To Whom It May Concern, with Quill and Quire Reviews Editor Steven W. Beattie.
– A This is Not A Reading Series event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Doubleday Canada, Gladstone Hotel, EYE WEEKLY, and Take Five on CIUT.
In this modern, multicultural re-telling of King Lear, internationally acclaimed novelist Priscilla Uppal explores the vulnerability and complexity of family and inheritance.
Hardev Dange is suffering through a tumultuous year. He’s just been informed that the bank is going to foreclose on his house. His fickle daughter Birendra is on the verge of marriage, his son Emile is studying curses (while falling in love with a fellow male grad student), and his younger daughter, Dorothy, who’s deaf, is working at a tattoo and body piercing parlour and collecting stories from the older men languishing at her local hangout. And because he’s confined to a wheelchair, Hardev is dependent on his homecare worker, the kleptomaniac Rodriguez, to help him devise a plan to keep house and home together.
In To Whom It May Concern, Uppal exposes the tragic and comedic dimensions of our failures to communicate and the consequences of our betrayals, which result in disappointment and disillusionment, but also, unexpectedly, in moments of compassion and love.
“To be this young and assured a storyteller, this insightful an observer of human nature is, if not the product of divine intervention, at least very rare.” — Ottawa Citizen
Priscila Uppal is a Toronto-based author and academic. Uppal was one of three Canadian writers on the 2007 shortlist for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize. She is the author of five collections of poetry and the internationally acclaimed novel The Divine Economy of Salvation. Uppal completed her PhD in English Literature at York University in Toronto, where she is a professor of English Literature. The American Library Association recently named Uppal a “Canadian Writer to Watch”.
Steven W. Beattie is a writer and critic in Toronto. He is the Reviews Editor at the Canadian publishing magazine Quill & Quire, and has published in the Vancouver Sun, the Edmonton Journal, Canadian Notes and Queries, and elsewhere. Beattie’s online home is the popular literary blog, That Shakesperian Rag.
Linda Griffiths is a playwright, actor and teacher. She has received numerous honours, notably five Dora Mavor Moore awards, two Chalmer’s awards, and the Los Angeles’ A.G.A. Award for her performance in John Sayles’ film Liana. Griffiths is an Adjunct Professor to the University of Toronto’s Masters Program in Creative Writing. Recent projects include two one-person-shows, The Last Dog of War, and Baby Finger as well as a Victorian epic, Age of Arousal (2007), wildly inspired from the novel by George Gissing.
Andrew Pyper is an acclaimed writer and editor. He is the author of four bestselling novels, Lost Girls (a New York Times Notable Book), The Trade Mission, and The Wildfire Season, and most recently The Killing Circle as well as Kiss Me, a collection of short stories. Lost Girls and The Killing Circle are currently in development for feature films. Pyper lives in Toronto.
Anthony De Sa is a writer and teacher. He grew up in Toronto’s Portuguese community. His short fiction has been published in several North American literary magazines. De Sa attended The Humber School for Writers and now heads the English department and directs the creative writing program at a high school for the arts. Barnacle Love is his first book and he is currently at work on a novel. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three sons.
Shyam Selvadurai came to Canada at the age of nineteen from Sri Lanka with his family at the age of nineteen. Funny Boy, his bestselling first novel, won the W. H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and, in the U.S., The Lambda Literary Award, and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Cinnamon Gardens, his second novel, was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. It has been published in the U.S., the U.K., India, and numerous countries in Europe. Selvadurai lives in Toronto.
Deanne Williams is an Associate Professor in English at York University. She specializes in medieval and early modern literature, especially Shakespeare. Current projects include a study of Renaissance Medievalism. Williams received the 2003 John Charles Polanyi Prize for literature. Her book, The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare, has just been awarded the Roland H. Bainton Prize for Best Book in Literature from the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Priscila Uppal: Adria Iwasutiak, aiwasutiak@randomhouse.com, (416) 957-1563
This Is Not A Reading Series: Chris Reed, tinars@pagesbooks.ca, (416) 598-1447 ext 221
