BC AUTHORS TIMOTHY TAYLOR AND FLETCHER FITZGIBBON READ VIRTUALLY NOV. 18 FOR NELSON, B.C.’s OXYGEN ART CENTRE
Author Reading Series
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
7:00 PM
Zoom
Free/ by donation
R.S.V.P. required
Famed Vancouver fiction and nonfiction writer Timothy Taylor, and Slocan Valley author Fletcher FitzGibbon will read from and talk about their writing online on Wed., Nov. 18 as the Zoom continuation of the “Home and Away” author reading series co-presented by Nelson, B.C.’s Oxygen Art Centre and Elephant Mountain Literary Festival.
The event begins at 7 p.m. Those interested in attending the event need to R.S.V.P. by emailing info@oxygenartcentre.org. Attendees will receive the Zoom link and accompanying event information once they R.S.V.P. The event is free and everyone welcome to attend. Donations are encouraged: $2 – $5 via Oxygen’s CanadaHelps page. Author Tom Wayman will emcee the event.
Oxygen, at 320 Vernon St. (alley entrance), is the city’s only artist-run centre. The Nov. 18 event was originally scheduled last March as an in-person event, part of a series pairing a Kootenay author with one from elsewhere. This virtual event reinstates the series online. A Q & A session at the November event will offer the chance for reading attendees to interact with the featured writers.
A short story by Taylor, who currently teaches writing at UBC, won the 2000 Journey Prize. His first novel, Stanley Park (2001), was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was chosen as the 2004 title for One Book, One Vancouver. The novel was a contender in CBC’s 2007 Canada Reads competition.
His most recent titles include the novel The Rule of Stephens (2018) and a food memoir, Foodville: Biting Dispatches from a Food-Obsessed City (2014). The Toronto Star said of The Rule of Stephens that “Taylor has composed a tightly-crafted, suspenseful story, and one that smartly plays off the disjunction between the rational world of Stephen Hawking and the ‘lower and darker land’ of Stephen King.”
The National Post called Foodville “a fun take-down of our obsession with food and the next new thing. He takes to task those who describe dishes with ridiculous superlatives by simply asking ‘Really?’ Is that restaurant really ‘a national treasure’? Was it really ‘a transcendent food experience?’”
FitzGibbon is perhaps Canada’s only author who is also a practicing Chartered Professional Accountant. He was a prize-winner in Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine’s 2016 fiction contest, co-founded the Nelson Writers’ Salon, and has acted in community theatre and performed as a storyteller to a range of audiences. He recently published a chapbook, A Field Guide to Dream Data—a combination poetry collection and how-to guide for collecting information on your dreams.
He describes his writing as aiming “to reconcile his experiences in the fast-paced realm of business and his appreciation and admiration of the natural world.”
The Nov. 18 author reading series is supported in part by the B.C. Arts Council and the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, and co-sponsored by Nelson’s Elephant Mountain Literary Festival.
