Larissa Lai
Larissa Lai was born in La Jolla, California, grew up in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and currently lives in Calgary. Her novel When Fox is a Thousand was first published in 1995; a new edition, featuring an afterword by the author, was published by in 2004. In 2009, she published Automaton Biographies, her first solo poetry book that was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize at the BC Book Prize. She is also the author of Salt Fish Girl as well as a book-length collaborative long poem with Rita Wong called sybil unrest, published in 2009. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary and directs The Insurgent Architects’ House for Creative Writing there. Website: larissalai.com.
For More Information
Interviews:
- Larissa Lai’s summer reading list – At the University of Calgary’s website
The Tiger Flu
Kirilow is a doctor’s apprentice whose lover, Peristrophe, is a “starfish,” a woman who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help her clone sisters whose organs are failing. When a denizen from Salt Water City suffering from a mysterious flu comes into their midst, Peristrophe becomes infected and dies, prompting Kirilow to travel to the city, where the flu is now a pandemic, to find a new starfish who will help save her sisters. There, Kirilow meets Kora, a girl-woman desperate to save her family from the epidemic. Kora has everything Kirilow is looking for, except the will to abandon her own family. But before Kirilow can convince her, both are kidnapped by a mysterious group of men to serve as test subjects for a new technology that can cure the mind of the body.
Bold, beautiful, and wildly imaginative, The Tiger Flu is a genre-bending tour de force.
All events with Larissa Lai
Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor
1221 2nd Street SW