Best-selling and acclaimed fiction writer Barbara Gowdy will give a reading from her new work on Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 7:30 p.m. in the UPEI Faculty Lounge, Main Building.  A reception and book signing will follow.

Gowdy burst on the scene in 1989 with Falling Angels, a darkly comic novel about three sisters growing up in a highly eccentric and dysfunctional suburban family. She followed with We So Seldom Look on Love, a short story collection which conjures and investigates people’s varied sexual behaviour. More recently, her writing took a daring new direction with White Bone, a story not simply about elephants, but told by elephants themselves. Also a classic quest tale, White Bone imagines elephants’ culture, language, spiritual beliefs, memory and song during their quest for survival.

In Gowdy’s new novel, Helpless, Celia is a single parent with two jobs and a beautiful young daughter. During a power blackout, amidst a city’s confusion, her daughter is kidnapped. Gowdy taps into the tension below the surface of contemporary life. She writes with the uncanny and fearless ability to reveal our common soul and to explore the intricate complexities of love. While her characters undergo distressing or harrowing experiences, readers respond to them with sympathy and hope.

Gowdy’s reading is sponsored by the UPEI English Department with support from The Canada Council of the Arts.