By Terry O’Shaunessy
Award-winning novelist, journalist and biographer Charles Foran will make a special appearance next week at StoryFest 2013, Hudson’s annual literary festival that brings the crème-de-la-crème of Canada’s literary scene to the tiny town on the Lake of Two Mountains.
Author of the much-lauded Mordecai: The Life & Times, Foran will talk about Mordecai Richler and also touch on the subject of his most recent book, Maurice Richard, and the hockey legend’s iconic role in the emergence of a strong Quebec.
The Globe and Mail called Foran’s definitive biography of Richler “probably the single most awarded book of any genre in the history of Canadian literature.” The book won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Award, the Canadian Jewish Book Award, and the Charles Taylor Prize, all in 2011.
Charles Foran has written several novels as well, including The Butterfly Lovers, Carolan’s Farewell and Kitchen Music, and has played a role representing Canada with PEN International, the organization that campaigns on behalf of writers around the world who are persecuted, imprisoned and exiled for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
From 2011 to just last month as president of PEN Canada, Foran also lived in China in 1989/90 and witnessed the democracy movement that culminated in the Tiananmen Square massacre. He wrote The Last House of Ulster, an account of a Catholic family in Belfast during The Troubles, and is a frequent commentator on the Quebec scene for many publications, including The Globe and Mail and The Walrus. He most recently wrote a lengthy feature on persecuted Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in light of that artist’s current major exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
All in all, Foran’s visit promises to provide an absorbing, fascinating and timely evening.
Charles Foran will appear at Hudson Village Theatre on Tuesday, October 15 at 7.30 p.m. Tickets: $15.
PHOTO CREDIT: James Lahey 2010
