69传媒

Nova Scotian writer Leo McKay Jr., who reads at 69传媒on February 25, was teaching English with his wife Kathy in Japan, when he woke up one morning to the word 鈥淪tellarton,鈥� his home town, on the radio. The Westray Mining Disaster had just occurred. That event, fictionalized as the Eastyard disaster at Albion Mines, along with McKay鈥檚 lineage as the descendent of miners and his childhood in Pictou County, is at the heart of his novel Twenty-Six.

McKay, and Alberta poet and UNB graduate Erin Knight will read at 7:30 p.m., February 25, in the 69传媒Faculty Lounge, Main Building. A reception and book signing will follow.

McKay鈥檚 fiction debut, Like This, was an impressive collection of gritty and potent short stories, with characters and a narrative voice that grabbed readers by the heart and gut. It was a finalist for the Giller Prize. A graduate of UBC鈥檚 MFA program in Creative Writing, he teaches English and Creative Writing at a high school in Truro.

In Twenty-Six, a family is changed forever after the devastating mining accident. Alistair MacLeod writes, "Universal in its scope, this is a novel about those who live and die in the underground of a coal-mining community. It is also about the families they leave behind on the surface. 鈥楽ubterranean鈥� in a variety of ways鈥搒ome of them quite wondrous鈥搕he novel is about memory, loss, guilt, and the light of redemption鈥搒ometimes, but not always, before it is too late."

And David Adams Richards writes that "Leo McKay Jr. has given us a book compassionate as love, tough as nails. The novel is a magnificent human drama, profound, haunting, and elegiac."

Erin Knight鈥檚 first book of poetry, The Sweet Fuels, reflects on the notion of orientation--whether in terms of magnetic north or street signs, the entrails of an animal or the vowels in a name--as a task of translation. Originally from Edmonton, she received an MA in Creative Writing and English from the University of New Brunswick.

This event is sponsored by the 69传媒English Department, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.