Wordfest 25@25: Esi Edugyan & Steven Price

Wordfest 25@25: Esi Edugyan & Steven Price

Last week, Ian Williams passed the daisy to Esi Edugyan, who requested she be paired with a writer she knows very, very well – her husband, Steven Price. 

The 60-minute conversation will start at 7:00 PM MT. (The pre-show will begin at 6:50 PM MT.)  

As a passholder you will be automatically registered for this event, with access to the live stream on Wordfest.com, as well as the option of watching it on demand whenever works for you. Look for our unique Digital Doggie Bag after the event with all the links, goodies and references from the conversation.

About Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan is author of the novels  The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2004),  Half-Blood Blues (2011), (winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize) and Washington Black (2018), which also won the Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize. Born and raised in Calgary, she lives in Victoria, British Columbia with her husband, the poet and novelist Steven Price, and their two children.

About Washington Black

*WINNER OF THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE

*FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE  

*NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY The Globe and Mail • CBC • Toronto Star • Maclean's The Boston Globe ● The Washington Post ● Time ● Entertainment Weekly ● San Francisco Chronicle ● Financial Times ● Minneapolis Star Tribune ● NPR ● The Economist ● Bustle ● The Dallas Morning• The New York Times Book Review

Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. 
 
But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.

About Steven Price

Steven Price is the author of the novels, Into That Darkness (2011),  By Gaslight (2016), longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and  Lapedusa, (2019) also longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. An acclaimed poet, he has written two award-winning poetry books, Anatomy of Keys (2006), winner of the Gerald Lampert Award, and Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012), winner of the ReLit Award. He lives in Victoria, B.C. with his wife Esi Edugyan and their children.

About Lampedusa

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZEFrom the #1 nationally bestselling author of By Gaslight, a novel of exquisite emotional force about love and art in the life of one of the great writers, reminiscent of Colm Tóibín's The Master, or Michael Cunningham's The Hours.

In sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s, Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, struggles to complete the novel that will be his lasting legacy, The Leopard. With a firm devotion to the historical record, Lampedusa leaps effortlessly into the mind of the writer and inhabits the complicated heart of a man facing down the end of his life, struggling to make something of lasting worth, while there is still time. 

Achingly beautiful and elegantly conceived, Steven Price's recent novel is an intensely moving story of one man's awakening to the possibilities of life, intimately woven against the transformative power of a great work of art.

Buy Their Books

Washington Black

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Lampedusa

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Buy Their Recommended Books

To continue with the generosity that is at the heart of the Daisy Chain concept – and help promote the work of authors whose book events have been affected by COVID-19 – we asked the 25@25 authors to highlight a book published in 2020 that they would encourage you to read. These books will be available at Owl's Nest and Shelf Life in Calgary. If you buy five or more of the 25@25 authors’ featured books (either their current title or their backlist) or their recommended books, you will receive a 25% discount. Please contact the booksellers for more details about the discount.

Buy Esi Edugyan’s Recommended Book: Through the Garden by Lorna Crozier

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Buy Steven Price’s Recommended Book: The Certainties by Aislinn Hunter

 “A beautiful, lyrical novel that I absolutely loved.”

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Curiouser?

Articles:

• An interview with Esi Edugyan on her book “Washington Black” – B:M2020
• Attica Locke and Esi Edugyan, in conversation: “There is so much of our existence that has not been heard” – The Guardian
• Why Steven Price’s new novel imagines the final years of Lampedusa, Sicilian prince and author of The Leopard – CBC Books
• At Home With Writers Esi Edugyan and Steven Price – Victoria News