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NeWest Press and Shelf Life Books invite you to the Calgary launch of Ellen Anderson Penno's Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found, with special guest Sharon Butala. Join us on May 15th, 2024 at 7:00 pm at Shelf Life Books to celebrate Ellen's new memoir! Stop by to listen to some readings, participate in a Q&A, and grab a signed copy. See you there!Reserve your copy here: https://store.shelflifebooks.ca/?q=h.tviewer&using_sb=status&qsb=keyword&qse=s55Ya9REjhA8_0-dSEt1IA
The event will be live streamed on YouTube! If you're unable to attend in person, then tune in please: https://youtube.com/live/NTIbaz0JxvU?feature=share
About Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found:
When she was twenty-four years old, Ellen Anderson Penno lost her partner in a climbing accident while they were ascending Mount Baker in Washington’s Cascade Range.
The avalanche hid his body in a crevasse just weeks before Penno was slated to begin medical school, and she soon found herself torn between deferring her studies for a year, or starting right away with a full course load.
Rather than succumbing to grief and risk never beginning her medical education at all, Penno plunged deep into her studies, surrounded by death on all sides, struggling to maintain her way through her turbulent emotions and a rigorous med school schedule.
In this stirring and often mordantly funny new memoir, Ellen Anderson Penno structures a story of mourning, loss, despair and love through the lens of the classic medical text Gray’s Anatomy, showing readers what becomes of those who must rebuild their lives after tragedy strikes.
About Ellen Anderson Penno:
Ellen Anderson Penno is a writer and full-time medical doctor, earning an MD and MS from the University of Minnesota, with rotating surgical internship at Hennepin County Hospital, Minneapolis, and ophthalmology residency at the Mayo Clinic. She has earned a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing from Humber College and is currently completing her Graduate Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She immigrated to Calgary, Alberta in 1997 where she continues to live with her adult daughters and dog pal Ed. Her memoir Counting Bones will be released in 2024.
About This Strange Visible Air:
In this incisive collection, Sharon Butala reflects on the ways her life has changed as she’s grown old. She knows that society fails the elderly massively, and so she tackles ageism and loneliness, friendship and companionship. She writes with pointed wit and acerbic humour about dinner parties and health challenges and forgetfulness and complicated family relationships and the pandemic—and lettuce. And she tells her story with the tremendous skill and beauty of a writer who has masterfully honed her craft over the course of her storied four-decade career.
Butala gives us a book to be cherished—an elegant and expansive look at the complexities and desires of aging and the aged, standing in stark contrast to the stereotyped, simplistic portrayals of the elderly in our culture.
This Strange Visible Air
is a true gift.
About Sharon Butala:
Sharon Butala is an award-winning author of nineteen books, numerous articles and essays, poetry and five published plays. She has three times been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Butala is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, the 2012 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence, and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. In 2002 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Shelf Life Books, 1302 4 St SW, Calgary, AB T2R 0X8, Canada,Calgary, Alberta
