Valley Voices is back to bring a new book to light along with putting an important conversation into the spotlight from a local poet.
The event, called Gender, Rebellion & Rising Book Launch and Reading, features local novelist Hannah Calder and poet jaz papadopoulos Feb. 5, 7-9 p.m. at the Caetani Centre (admission is by donation).
Calder’s new book, Hester in Sunlight (New Star Books) is an experimental “novel atop a novel,” where readers follow the main character, a writer, in the very act and exploration of writing the book they are reading.
The writer’s contemporary world (anxiety, pronouns, teenage phone addicts, divorce) often collides with a re-imagining of Hester’s world (adultery, stockings, cottages, skirts that sweep the town’s dirt).
Calder says others have described her style as “unique, metafictional, bizarre, frustrating, poetic, absurd, playful.”
But she would say, “my style reflects a certain porousness in the way I encounter the world as a writer. In this novel, I write about my style, and I play tricks on the reader by presenting autobiographical elements that are fictional and fictional elements that are autobiographical. And all this play with reality and fiction spills over into my approach to Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter.”
Calder, who teaches English and creative writing at Okanagan College, says her desire to free Hester from her fate fed a desire to write this book—and it left Calder reflecting on the limitations of her life and the lives of others.
“I’m also writing about the straitjacket of being in character and what it feels like to break free and become other selves. I picked up on this complexity in Hawthorne’s characters. They feel like aspects of his psyche or characters from his dreaming mind, and I wanted to explore what it means to live in all possible ways rather than in one, fixed way.”
If women were discarded scapegoats in Hawthorne’s day, a time traveller might be surprised by how sexual assault survivors have been treated and impacted by the trials of the #MeToo era.
I Feel That Way Too is a poetic and critical exploration of the role of media and social power — one that has brought forth an array of moving stories from readers since its launch last fall by papadopoulos.
“I appreciate every time a reader approaches me to say they felt seen by the work, or that it put words to murky feelings they’ve been carrying. This goal is written right into the text: When I open to you / with a wordless nothing / all I hope you’ll say back is / I feel that way too.”
With so many affirming and important conversations astir, papadopoulos continues to feel hopeful.
The book was a bestseller in their hometown of Winnipeg and one of the community’s Greek Orthodox priests recently requested a copy.
