Safe Spaces
with Dina Del Bucchia, Frances Boyle and Isabel Bogdan
Tougher Than the Rest is a collection of stories that build like stacking blocks and connect like a web, with sharp prose equally humorous and dark. Grief hums beneath the surface of every story; characters grieve people lost to death or circumstance, the ballooning climate crisis, and lives made unlivable by late-stage capitalism. These same characters are forever reaching for connection and often find it in other women, friendships, and girlhood. You won’t be able to put this one down. Jessica Johns
Join us for a conversation with three acclaimed authors whose books face difficult realities about what it means to be safe as a woman.
Vancouver’s Dina Del Bucchia returns with a collection of short stories about the ripple effects of wealth disparity. Set in the near future, Tougher Than the Rest, features women in different stages of life?from former trophy wives and activist yoga obsessives to retail and white-collar workers?in an urban environment rife with wealth disparity. Their stories are linked by a corporate real estate developer who affects the protagonists’ lives in ways both small and large, each one inspired by a classic song title from a hypermasculine artist.
Skin Hunger, by Ottawa’s Frances Boyle, tells two stories in counterpoint: the story of Rowan, a young activist who crusades for animal liberation to compensate for a dearth of emotional comfort and physical connection, and that of Evie, Rowan’s mother, whose struggles with mental illness and substance abuse have long kept the family apart. It is the story of a mother and daughter, starved for nurturing and compassion, as they struggle to find a home in the world, one that, despite decades apart, might bring them back together.
German bestseller, Isabel Bogdon joins us with her acclaimed novel Running, translated by Luise Von Flotow. A woman is running for her life. She’s running away from her life, toward a new life. The trauma she is facing is slowly unveiled as she runs, as she mulls over what happened, examines her feelings, bursts out in anger and pain, but also describes her world as she jogs through it, and learns how she can and must return to a new place in life. Panting, cursing, in pain and anger, and finally full of energy and courage, she relives the event, the depression that caused it, her implication in his illness, her sadness at the end of their dreams.
Books are available for purchase from our friends at Perfect Books.
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The Authors
Dina Del Bucchia
Frances Boyle
