BOOK LAUNCH AND RECEPTION

MARINA SONKINA / Expulsion and Other Stories

Monday Nov 23  5:30-6:30pm

Expulsion & Other Stories consists of two parts: a novella followed by a group of short stories. But the main protagonists have one thing in common: they are all women coming of age in difficult times. In the short stories, set in post-Stalinist Russia, the women are confronted by dictatorship's mundane face - a minor bureaucrat, a school teacher, a doctor. Nobody spells out the rules of survival to the young girls and women, yet each learns to play - or pays the price, that of facing “expulsion”. The novella “Face” shares a similar motif of expulsion but takes the reader to a different place - the urban sprawl and property greed of modern Vancouver.

A former professor of Russian literature at Moscow State University, writer and scholar  Marina Sonkina now lives in Vancouver and shares her time between teaching at SFU and UBC and writing, tango dancing and taking her students to culture trips to Russia. She has published four collections of short stories as well as a short novel and 2 children's books.

A major annual event presenting about 20 writers and their books in readings, seminars and discussions. The discussion was together with the writer Rhea Tregebov and the host for the session was| Nancy Richler.

Nancy Richler (left), Rhea Tregebov (centre).