Wordfest Presents Rowan Hisayo Buchanan & Genki Ferguson

Wordfest Presents Rowan Hisayo Buchanan & Genki Ferguson

Wordfest’s Imagine On Air is pleased to present a pair of contemporary fiction writers whose new novels – infused with empathy and edge – explore our collective search for connection: Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and Genki Ferguson. 

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

This live-stream event is free, and if you RSVP, we'll send you a reminder along with easy instructions to help you get set up, as well as our unique Digital Doggie Bag after the event with highlights and extras from the conversation.

We are grateful to Abrams Books and Penguin Random House Canada for making it possible for us to present Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and Genki Ferguson. 

About Starling Days

Starling Days is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Both quiet and scorching, this is a story about mental health, desire, and the myriad mythologies we both build and destroy. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has offered us another supreme gift of a novel, a rare opportunity to love and forgive our darkest and most shimmering selves.” –T. Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

The moving new novel by the author of Harmless Like You, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and NPR Great Read

On their first date, Mina told Oscar that she was bisexual, vegetarian, and on meds. He married her anyhow. A challenge to be met. She had low days, sure, but manageable. But now, maybe not so much ... Mina is standing on the George Washington Bridge late at night, staring over the edge, when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the policeman she’s not about to jump, but he doesn’t believe her. Oscar is called to pick her up.

With the idea of leaving New York for London – a place for Mina “to learn the floorplan of this sadness” – Oscar arranges a move. In London, Mina, a classicist, tries grappling with her mental health issues by making lists. Of WOMEN WHO SURVIVED – Penelope, Psyche, Leda. Iphigenia, but only in one of the tellings. Of things that make her HAPPY – enamel coffee cups. But what else? She at last finds a beam of light in Phoebe, and friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina’s complicated love is tested.

A gorgeously wrought novel, variously about love, mythology, mental illness, Japanese beer, and the times we need to seek out milder psychological climates, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s Starling Days – written in exquisite prose rich with lightly ironic empathy – is a complex and compelling work of fiction by a singularly gifted young writer. 

About Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan an American and British writer. She received her BA from Columbia and her MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first novel, Harmless Like You, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and NPR Great Read. Her work has appeared in Granta, Guernica, the Guardian, and the Paris Review.

About Satellite Love

Set in 1999 Japan, Satellite Love is a heartbreaking and beautifully unconventional debut novel about a girl, a boy, and a satellite – and a bittersweet meditation on loneliness, alienation, and what it means to be human.

On the eve of the new millennium, in a city in southern Japan that progress has forgotten, 16-year-old Anna Obata looks to the stars for solace. An outcast at school, and left to fend for herself and care for her increasingly senile grandfather at home, Anna copes with her loneliness by searching the night sky for answers. But everything changes the evening the Low Earth Orbit satellite (LEO for short) returns her gaze and sees her as no one else has before.

After Leo is called down to Earth, he embarks on an extraordinary journey to understand his own humanity as well as the fragile mind of the young woman who called him into being. As Anna withdraws further into her own mysterious plans, he will be forced to question the limits of his devotion and the lengths he will go to protect her.

Full of surprising imaginative leaps and yet grounded by a profound understanding of the human heart, Satellite Love is a brilliant and deeply moving meditation on loneliness, faith, and the yearning for meaning and connection. It is an unforgettable story about the indomitable power of the imagination and the mind's ability to heal itself, no matter the cost, no matter the odds.

About Genki Ferguson

Genki Ferguson was born in New Brunswick to a family of writers and grew up in Calgary. He spent much of his childhood in the subtropical island of Kyushu, Japan, where his mother's family still resides. Fluent in Japanese and capable of making a decent sushi roll, Ferguson was the recipient of the 2017 Helen Pitt Award for visual arts, and recently completed a degree in Film Production while working part-time at Book Warehouse, an indie store in Vancouver.

Buy the Books:

Starling Days

Owl’s Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Satellite Love

Owl’s Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Borrow the Books from the Library:

Starling Days

Calgary Public Library

Satellite Love

Calgary Public Library 

Curiouser?

Articles:

• Sheltering: Rowan Hisayo Buchanan on Relationship Dynamics and Mental Health -Literary Hub
• Genki Fergusion Explores Intimacy and Isolation in His Debut Novel Satellite Love –ECUAD News 

Reviews:

• Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan review – a tale of struggle and survival -The Guardian