ZOE SZUCH
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Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights On Air has been chosen as Medicine Hat's One Book One Community reading selection for 2009.
The One Book One Community program is somewhat of a city-wide book club, where everyone can read the same book at the same time and discuss the book at a three-day event scheduled for Feb. 26, 27 and 28, 2009.
One Book One Community is jointly organized by the Vera Bracken Library at the Medicine Hat College and the Medicine Hat Public Library.
"We start off in the spring by asking readers in the community which book we should read," said Sheila Drummond, the head of reference services at the Medicine Hat Public Library.
Any suggested book is required to be either Canadian in theme or written by a Canadian author, should stimulate discussion and debate, and be available in paperback.
Each year, the One Book One Community selection committee receives approximately 20 to 25 eligible recommendations, which are then read and discussed by committee members.
This year's selection is both Canadian in theme and written by a Canadian author. Late Nights On Air is the 2007 winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2008 Ottawa Book Award and the 2008 Libris Award.
"I am completely delighted," said Hay. "Three cheers for Medicine Hat," she added.
Late Nights On Air takes place in the mid-1970s, in Yellowknife, N.W.T. at a local radio station. The novel is "set against the stunning background of the Canadian north," according to the book sleeve. "(It) is a story of misguided love, shifting loyalties and hard-won self discoveries."
Hay noted, "I was interested in exploring many things, including the kind or people who are drawn to working in radio and listening to radio. It's a exploration of shyness in a way ... I just found it interesting that you can be shy and bold at the same time. You can be shy and yet bold enough to go on air but you can be too shy to be any good on air, so that was kind of the starting point."
Hay, an Ontario native, received the 2002 Marian Engel Award for her body of literary work. Hay is also the author of Garbo Laughs (2003), which won the 2004 Ottawa Book Award and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for English Language Fiction. The Owen Sound, Ont.-born author also penned A Student Of Weather (2000) which the Globe and Mail anointed as a Notable Book of the Year, and was short-listed for the 2000 Giller Prize. Hay, who currently resides in Ottawa, has published two short stories, Small Change (2000) and Crossing The Snow Line (1989) as well as two creative non-fictions: Captivity Tales-Canadians in New York (1993) and The Only Snow In Havana (1992).
In the past, the One Book One Community has read Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Englishmen's Boy, Joan Clark's An Audience of Chairs, Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness and Joy Kogawa's Obasan.
Late Nights On Air (paperback edition) retails for $22, plus tax at the Coles bookstore at the Medicine Hat Mall, or is available from the Public Library.
For more information visit: www.mhc.ab.ca/library/oboc/default.html |
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