Media Release

For Immediate Release

February 25, 2008

The Saint Mary’s University English Department presents “Visiting Authors Month”

Thursday, February 28 – 7:00p.m. – Loyola Dining Room

Last year, Erin Knight, born in Edmonton and now living in St. Cathartines, published her first poetry collection, The Sweet Fuels, with Goose Lane Editions. She studied at UNB and the International Exchange Program of the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara. Her poems have appeared in such literary journals as Arc, The Fiddlehead, and The Malahat Review. Some of her poems are written in English, converted into Spanish, then translated back into English.

Wednesday, March 5 – 7:00p.m. – Sobey 265

Lisa Moore of St. John’s is a graduate of NSCAD, a two-time finalist for the Giller Prize, and winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean for her first novel, Alligator. Her other books include two short-story collections, Degrees of Nakedness and Open. Thanks to the Dean of Arts, Moore is writer-in-residence at Saint Mary’s University during the first week of March.

Friday, March 14 – 7:30p.m. – McNally Theatre Auditorium

2nd Annual Cyril Byrne Memorial Lecture

Colm Toibin was born in County Wexford, Ireland, lived in Barcelona for three years in the 1970s, and became a widely respected journalist in the 1980s. His fifth novel, The Master, won the 2006 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His other books include a story collection (Mother and Sons), and the non-fiction books Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border, Love in A Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar, and Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush.

Thursday, March 20 – 7:00p.m. – Loyola – Art Gallery

Patricia Young, this year’s Writer in Residence at UNB, has written many books of poetry including More Watery Still and Ruin and Beauty: New and Selected Poems. She has won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the CBC Literary Competition, and the B.C. Book Prize for Poetry. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia. In 2004, Biblioasis published her first book of short fiction, Airstream.

Terence Young has lived most of his life in Victoria, BC, with times sojourning in northern Manitoba, Quebec City, and Ireland. He was the co-founder of The Claremont Review, completed an MFA at UBC, and has taught high school for many years. His publications include two story collections, The Island in Winter and Rhymes with Useless, and two books of poems, including Moving Day.

Wayne Clifford was twenty when Coach House Press released his first collection of poetry as their first publication. After several collections, including An Ache in the Ear, Clifford went 25 years without publishing more books, while raising four children and teaching language skills in Kingston, Ontario. In 2004’s Porcupine Quill published his On Abducting the ‘Cello, followed by The Book of Were and, last year, The Exile’s Papers. Clifford now writes full-time on Grand Manan Island.

Wednesday, March 26 – 7:00p.m. – Loyola – Art Gallery

For fourteen years, Noah Richler made documentaries and features for BBC Radio before returning to Canada in 1998. He was the books editor and then literary columnist for The National Post, and has contributed to numerous publications in Britain, including The Guardian, Punch, and The Daily Telegraph, and in Canada to The Walrus and Saturday Night. He is the author of This Is My Country, What’s Yours? – A Literary Atlas of Canada, a national bestseller last year.

For more information on any of these presentations, please phone 420.0315 (for Colm Toibin, 491.6222). Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts Literary Readings Program and to Bookmark.

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For More Information:

Paul Fitzgerald
Public Affairs Officer
Saint Mary's University, Public Affairs
(902) 420.5514
E-mail: paul.fitzgerald@smu.ca
www.smu.ca