Lorenzo Society Virtual Book Club featuring Mark Blagrave-FR and SJ

Event Details:

UNB Saint John’s Lorenzo Virtual Book Club will kick off its series on Wednesday, Sept. 15 at 7:30 p.m. and will feature novelist and playwright Mark Blagrave discussing Lay Figures.

In Lay Figures, Elizabeth MacKinnon moves to Saint John, NB in 1939 to find inspiration for her poetry in the bohemian life of the city’s central peninsula. Swept up in the vibrant society of the city’s poets, painters, potters, dancers, and playwrights, she finds herself joining their struggles to make sense of making art in a time of economic depression.

Inhabiting the lives of the artists who find themselves in the port city taking refuge from the Depression, Lay Figures explores relationships between art and lived experience, artist and subject, artist and audience, and between margins and centre, and traces the development of a young female writer against the backdrop of the Depression and early war years in Saint John. In a story that couples bitter despair with exuberant triumphs, Elizabeth and her fellow artists make life-changing discoveries about politics and social responsibility, desire and betrayal.

The Lorenzo Virtual Book Club will be a moderated discussion and all are welcome to attend.  The conversation will take place on Microsoft Teams and will later be featured in the Lorenzo by Night podcast.  Important to note is that the registrants can be individuals, book clubs, or groups of friends who have bubbled. Also, participants can be from Saint John, other communities in New Brunswick, other parts of Canada and beyond. Participants must register in advance by emailing lorenzo@unb.ca.

The Lorenzo Reading Series acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets, the New Brunswick Literary Promotion Program, UNB Saint John and its private reading sponsors.

SPOILER ALERT:  A spoiler alert notice will be issued at the end of the first part of the discussion to inform participants that, during the section portion of the evening, they will hear plot twists and, potentially, the ending. The assumption is that every participant has read the book prior to the event.