Highly lauded novelist to speak at Oxygen Art Centre
By Nelson Daily Staff
Kelowna author Corinna Chong, whose highly praised debut novel Belinda’s Rings has been called “a vital vibrant gem” by Canadian fiction writer Mark Anthony Jarman, will give a reading at Nelson’s Oxygen Art Centre on Friday, Oct. 4 at 7:30 p.m.
The Oxygen Art Centre is located at 320 Vernon St. (alley entrance). The reading, part of Oxygen’s Presentation Series, is free ($5 donation appreciated) and open to the public.
“The story of a mother running out on her family is nothing new in CanLit,” wrote the Toronto Globe and Mail about Chong’s novel, “nor are portraits of a zany and off-kilter families. But Corinna Chong’s treatment of these archetypes has produced something as vibrant as it is original.”
Chong’s” richly rendered characters,” according to the Globe and Mail, mean the novel “succeeds in capturing family tensions, and the bonds that trump these tensions.”
Chong’s writing has also appeared in such magazines as Grain, Echolocation and the Malahat Review. An English instructor at Okanagan College, she is also a graphic designer and co-edits the college’s literary magazine, Ryga.
“Chong’s talent is undeniable,” wrote the book trade journal Quill & Quire about Belinda’s Rings, published by NeWest Press this spring. “Her future in CanLit is assured.”
The Oxygen Art Centre’s 2013-2014 Presentation Series is supported by the Columbia Basin Trust and the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance.
