Sara Tilley is a writer, theatre artist, and clown, who lives and works in her home town of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her artistic work bridges writing, theatre and Pochinko Clown Through Mask technique, with each discipline informing and inspiring the others. Skin Room, her first novel, won both the Newfoundland and Labrador Percy Janes First Novel Award and the inaugural Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. It was short-listed for the Winterset Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. Tilley won the Lawrence Jackson Writer’s Award from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council in 2011. She has been Writer-in-Residence at the Calgary Distinguished Writers’ Program with the University of Calgary.

Duke

Sara Tilley’s new novel, Duke, set in outport Newfoundland and the Alaskan interior in the early half of the 20th century, is a tale of family obligation, repression and passion, ill health and ill luck. Duke Tilly is a tender un-hero, a poetic fool, a surprisingly contemporary fictional voice: humour, a devotion to beauty and keen observation are his methods. Suppressed impulses combined with dutiful action are the mainstays of Duke’s life as he pursues withheld paternal love from young adulthood into his middle years. Tilley tells Duke’s story in ways that are artfully original.