Russell Wangersky “It’s as if the wickedly observant Alice Munro and the bawdy Al Purdy had produced a love child, by way of a gritty newsroom…” (Toronto Star, April 30, 2006)
Update: December 18, a video of this reading is now available to view.
Reading with Russell Wangersky
Tuesday, November 26/7:30 p.m.
Special Collections & Archives Reading Room,
Fifth floor, Killam Memorial Library
Fiction writer and journalist Russell Wangersky will read at the Killam Library on Tuesday, November 26 at 7:30 p.m. The reading will take place in the Special Collections & Archives Reading Room on the fifth floor of the library. He will read from his latest collection of short stories, Whirl Away, for which he won the 2013 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.
Russell Wangersky was raised in Halifax, the son of a professor of oceanography at Dalhousie. He studied philosophy at Acadia, and during those years, he served as a volunteer firefighter in Wolfville. Eventually, he moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he worked as a reporter at the Sunday Express, spent five years at CBC Television, and returned to volunteer firefighting until 2002. Today, still in St. John’s, he is the author of four books and the commentary editor at the daily newspaper The Telegram.
An award-winning author, Russell has written four books: The Glass Harmonica, a novel; Burning Down the House, a personal account of his experiences as a volunteer firefighter; and Whirl Away and The Hour of Bad Decisions, two collections of short stories.
Other prizes won by Russell include the 2011 BMO-Winterset Award, the B.C. National Non-Fiction Book Award, the Edna Staebler Award, and the Rogers Cable Non-Fiction Prize. Whirl Away was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
This reading is part of the Canadian Literary Collection Project series (CLCP) and is sponsored by the Dalhousie Libraries. For more information about Russell Wangersky, visit his website.
