Award-winning writer to pay a visit
Rudy Wiebe to do reading, book signing at library
CBC Books notes Rudy Wiebe as one of Canada’s most acclaimed writers. He has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction twice. The Lethbridge Public Library welcomes Wiebe, who will discuss his new book, “Where the Truth Lies,” on Nov. 3 in the Community Meeting room at the Main Branch at 7 p.m. The reading, discussion, Q&A, and book signing will be hosted by Cliff Lobe.
Wiebe’s “Where the Truth Lies” collects 40 years of essays and speeches that the award-winning author has crafted. In this illuminating and wide-ranging selection, Wiebe provides a look behind the curtain, revealing his thought processes as he worked on many of his great books. Throughout this book, he dissects controversies that arose after the publication of his early novels, meditates on words and their inherent power, explores the great Canadian North and the Canadian body politic, reckons with his family history and Mennonite faith, all while providing an engaging and enlightening commentary. “Where the Truth Lies” is a vital compilation of a writing life.
“Wiebe was called the first major Mennonite writer to place his community’s experience in a broader framework. Mennonites assert the fundamental authority of Scripture, especially the New Testament, as a practical guide to life. But while Wiebe imbues his work with a deep moral seriousness, his focus has always been on narrative. ‘I never consciously think of writing a so-called Christian novel. I don’t think Albert Camus ever thought of writing an existentialist novel, either. I think of getting at, of building, a story.’ As a prairie writer, he has often concerned himself with Native stories, feeling place of birth to be more important than blood ancestry. ‘Those Mennonite villages in Russia are my heritage, but not my world. The world I feel and sense in my bones is the bush of northern Saskatchewan, of prairie Canada.’ Native spirituality, with its vital links to the physical world, has always attracted him. But his fiction manages to transcend nationality and locale to explore the struggles of
communities and individuals; his books and stories have been translated into nine European languages, as well as Chinese, Japanese and Hindi.” http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/ authors/33129/rudy-wiebe
He has received the following awards: 1973 - Governor General's Award for Fiction for The Temptations of Big Bear; 1986 - Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal; 1994 - Governor General's Award for Fiction for “A Discovery of Strangers”; 2000 - Made an Officer of the Order of Canada; 2007 Charles Taylor Prize for “Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest”; 2007 - Leslie K. Tarr Award Winner; 2009 - Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Alberta; 2009 - Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award Winner. He is also the co-author of the bestseller “Stolen Life, Journey of a Cree Woman,” which won the Viacom Canada Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-Fiction and the Alberta Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Events: Family fun at the Main Branch, Mini Monster Mash today begins at 1 p.m. — decorate a treat bag and trick or treat throughout the library and then at 2 p.m. enjoy a movie double feature in the Theatre Gallery.