BOOK LAUNCH: Corinna Chong — Bad Land w/ Marc Herman Lynch
Schedule
Wed Sep 18 2024 at 07:00 pm
UTC-06:00Location
1302 4 St SW #100, Calgary, AB, Canada, Alberta T2R 0X8 | Calgary, AB
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Join us for the Calgary launch of Corinna Chong's (author of The Whole Animal, Belinda's Rings) new novel, Bad Land. Corinna will be in conversation with Marc Herman Lynch.Bad Land is a smart and nuanced literary thriller exploring the aftermath of violence and the cost of family secrets. Praised by Lisa Moore as "surprising at every turn," the journey of outsider Regina (a thirtysomething loner) and Jez (her six-year-old niece with a vicious streak) against the backdrop of the Drumheller badlands is one like readers have never encountered, and won't soon forget.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A slow-burning story exploring the generational effects of repression and transgression, set against the raw, eerie landscape of the badlands
Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina's brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez - a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak - upending Regina's quiet life.
It's clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won't come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through the plains and mountains of Alberta's badlands to the coast of BC, forcing Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.
By turns thrilling and heartwarming, rife with gothic tension, and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Corinna Chong is the author of the novel Belinda’s Rings (NeWest Press, 2013) and The Whole Animal, a collection of short stories (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023). She won the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize, and her stories have been published in magazines across Canada. Bad Land, her latest novel from Arsenal Pulp Press, draws heavily on her Alberta roots. Corinna lives, writes, and teaches on unceded Syilx/Okanagan territory (Kelowna, BC).
Marc Herman Lynch is a writer and PhD candidate at the University of Calgary. He is the former President of filling Station Magazine and the former organizer of flywheel Reading Series. He works with young writers through Wordsworth Youth Writing Camp and most recently as the Writer in Residence at Queen Elizabeth Junior/Senior High School. He was the winner of the 2023 Kloppenburg Hybrid Non-Fiction Contest. His first book, Arborescent, came out in 2020 with Arsenal Pulp.
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Where is it happening?
1302 4 St SW #100, Calgary, AB, Canada, Alberta T2R 0X8Event Location & Nearby Stays:
