Book Launch: Catherine Lang's Embedded: The Irreconcilable Nature of War, Loss and Consequence
Schedule
Wed Sep 25 2024 at 06:30 pm
UTC-07:00Location
Book Warehouse Main Street | Vancouver, BC
Join author Catherine Lang for a reading & discussion to launch her book, Embedded: The Irreconcilable Nature of War, Loss and Consequence. She will be joined in discussion by author, lawyer & writer Renée Sarojini. Free to attend & everyone is welcome!
Books will be available for sale.
About the book:
Award-winning writer and former reporter Catherine Lang wrestles with the consequences of war in the aftermath of the death of her niece Michelle Lang, who was killed while embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
When Catherine Lang's niece and Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang was killed while embedded with Canadian troops near Kandahar City, Afghanistan, in 2009, her world shifted.
In the aftermath, Lang and her family experienced the rigour of military ceremony. As she pieced together fragments from Michelle’s last days, Lang connected with the loved ones of soldiers who died alongside Michelle. She met with those injured by the roadside bomb, including the lone civilian woman talking to Michelle at the time of the blast, discovering in her and others a steely resilience to carry on and a more intimate understanding of the meaning of sacrifice. Suddenly thrust close to this aspect of Canadian society, Lang began to question previously held black-and-white views about military engagement, and she turned to writing as a way to understand the impact on her and her family, and to ensure that Michelle lived on in memory.
Wrestling with the unfathomable consequence of war, she travels across Canada to learn about Michelle through the eyes of her colleagues and friends. This process brings Lang to Saskatchewan, where she had lived as a child—a homecoming that reveals much to Catherine about Michelle, and about herself. Brought together by a shared love of journalism, a career she left behind, and dedication to press freedom and to the rights of Afghan women and girls, Lang is led back to writing through her search for Michelle, and back to Michelle through the language of love and loss.
About Catherine Lang:
Catherine Lang worked as a community newspaper reporter and freelance writer at the outset of her writing career in the 1980s. In 1996, she published O-Bon in Chimunesu: A Community Remembered, a creative non-fiction work about the former Japanese-Canadian community on Vancouver Island, with Arsenal Pulp Press; O-Bon won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize at the 1997 BC Book Prizes. She later worked as an editor of provincial legislative debates and in treaty negotiations with Indigenous nations in BC. Lang lives in Victoria, BC.
About Renée Sarojini:
Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. Bramah’s Quest is the latest volume of her epic fantasy in verse, THOT J BAP, The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns. She was poet laureate for the City of Surrey 2015–2018 and volunteers for Event magazine, Meet the Presses collective, Surrey International Writers Conference and Poetry in Canada . Renée Sarojini teaches creative writing and editing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and hosts Lunch Poems at SFU. Find out
more https://thecanadaproject.wordpress.com/
Where is it happening?
Book Warehouse Main Street, 4118 Main St.,Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
