Lisa Moore: A Whole New Tribe
Lisa Moore, novelist and short story author from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and one of Canada’s most popular and innovative fiction writers, will read in Charlottetown on Monday, January 16, at 7:30 pm in the UPEI Faculty Lounge, SDU Main Building.
Intending to be a visual artist, Moore earned a BA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Returning to St. John’s, she studied at Memorial and began writing fiction. This career change has resulted in three Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction nominations, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, a Canadian Authors Association Jubilee Award, legions of fans, and many writers being inspired by her work.
Moore’s second novel, February, was long-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. The novel focuses on Helen in the decades after her husband drowned in the Ocean Ranger oil rig disaster off the Newfoundland coast. Moore’s latest novel, Caught, a fast-paced adventure story, is the story of David Slaney, a Newfoundlander and escaped convict who makes a second attempt at smuggling marijuana from Colombia to Canada.
As a short story writer, Moore has joined the ranks of Canada’s most gifted, engrossing, and provocative practitioners. As a younger author from our region, Moore lands us smack-dab in contemporary scenes and crises, with Atlantic Canadian characters born a generation or two after Alistair MacLeod’s fishers, miners, farmers, and home-makers. We’re not in mid-twentieth century Cape Breton anymore, Dorothy.
Novelist Jane Urquhart, in her introduction to The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore, writes, “Here we have the young urbanites of St. John’s, their bars and their apartments, the taxis they rode in and the fraught love affairs they endured and celebrated. This was the membership of a whole new tribe...I followed these young people through marathon parties, interpersonal claustrophobia, breakups, childbirth, and world travels...and always completely life-enhancing.”
As the bounty of cod vanished from Newfoundland’s waters, a plenitude of fiction writers rose from its shores to re-imagine and chronicle its history and present, its hardships and glories -- from Joan Clark, Bernice Morgan, and Wayne Johnston to Donna Morrissey and Michael Crummey. And Lisa Moore.
Winter’s Tales is sponsored by UPEI’s English Department, Faculty of Arts, and Vice-President Academic and Research, with funding from The Canada Council for the Arts. A reception and book signing will follow Lisa’s reading. Admission is free.
