Kathleen Miller, Master of the short story, coming to Knowlton Literary Festival
Submitted by Philip Lanthier Special to The Record
Most Canadians know painter Alex Colville's iconic work of a black horse galloping down a track in the dark towards an oncoming train (Horse and Train, 1954). What on earth is happening here? Who let the horse out of the barn, or did it escape, and what is going to happen next? There's a story here. More than one probably.
Colville's famous paintings, realistic and subtly mysterious, have provided short story writer Kathleen Miller with departure points for a series of fascinating narratives involving ordinary characters who, late in life, experience strange, often disturbing encounters. Late Breaking, a collection of linked stories, with characters who show up unexpectedly as time and locations shift, explores what Miller has called that time of life when the news breaks later and later.
Kathleen Miller is author of four previous short story collections, A Litany in Time of Plague (1994) and Give me Your Answer (1999), The Other Voice (2011), All Saints (2014), a novel, Brown Dwarf (2010) and a collection of essays, Holy Writ (2001) which explored the relationship between spirituality and creativity. “Writing stories is the way I pray,” she writes, and her stories view the human situation, particularly as we grow older, as fraught with memory, regret as well as touches of courage and humour. Colville's images, which often depict realistically rendered scenes from odd or surprising angles, have provided Miller with the perfect inspiration for her stories. “Like an Alex Colville painting,” said CBC Ontario Morning of the stories, “the more you realize there's something darker going on underneath the surface.”
Late Breaking comes with reproductions of Colville paintngs, and Miller will be showing these images on the screen as she makes her presentation Saturday morning, October 19 in the Knowlton Community Centre (270 Victoria) starting at 11:15. Cost of the session is $20, but festival goers can also take advantage of the weekend pass for $50 which allows participants to attend all sessions with the exception of the writing workshop, Louise Penny's conversation with Shelagh Rogers and brunch with Kim Thúy.
“Kathleen Miller will be a great discovery for many Festival goers,” says Festival President Philip Lanthier. “She's not very well known in Quebec, but when our selection committee read Late Breaking, we all decided she had to come. This most recent collection was nominated for three prestigious book awards and was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2018. She's not to be missed.”