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Join us at Innis Town Hall for the launch of INVISIBLE PRISONS, by Lisa Moore (Knopf Canada). In conversation with Deborah Dundas.ABOUT THE BOOK:
Riveting nonfiction from multi-award-winning author Lisa Moore, based on the shocking true story of a teenaged boy who endured abuse and solitary confinement at a reform school in Newfoundland, but survived through grit and redemptive love. Invisible Prisons is an extraordinary, empathetic collaboration between the magnificent writer Lisa Moore, best-known for her award-winning fiction, and a man named Jack Whalen, who as a child was held for four years at a reform school for boys in St John’s, where he suffered jaw-dropping abuses and deprivations. Despite the odds stacked against him, he found love on the other side, and managed to turn his life around as a husband and father. His daughter, Brittany, vowed at a young age to become a lawyer so that she could seek justice for him. Today, that is exactly what she is doing—and Jack's case is part of a lawsuit currently before the courts. The story has parallels with Unholy Orders by Michael Harris about the Mount Cashel orphanage, and with the many horrific stories about residential schools—all of which expose a paternalistic state causing harm and a larger society looking away. Yet two powerful qualities set this story apart. As much as it is about an abusive system preying on children, it is also a tender tale of love between Jack and his wife Glennis, who saw the good man inside a damaged person and believed in him. And it is written in a novelistic way by the great Lisa Moore, who makes vividly real every moment and character in these pages.
ABOUT LISA MOORE:
Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of the novels Caught , February , and Alligator (all shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, among other honours); the story collections Open (also shortlisted for the Giller Prize) and Something for Everyone ; and the young adult novel Flannery . Her books have won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and CBC’s Canada Reads, been finalists for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize ( February ). Moore is also the co-librettist, along with Laura Kaminsky, of the opera February , based on her novel of the same name. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
ABOUT DEBORAH DUNDAS:
Deborah Dundas grew up poor in the west end of Toronto. She is now a writer and journalist, has worked as a television producer and is currently an editor at the Toronto Star. Her work has appeared in numerous publications in Canada, the UK and Ireland including Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Canadian Notes and Queries, The Belfast Telegraph and The Sunday Independent. She attended York University for English and Political Science and has an MFA in Creative Non-fiction from the University of King’s College. She lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter and their loving, grumpy cat Jumper. She is the author of On Class.
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2 Sussex Avenue,Toronto,M5S 1J5,CA, Canada
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