About this Event
Join us for an evening with Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of Pick A Colour, in conversation with Martha Baillie!
ABOUT PICK A COLOUR
Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound depth. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complicated power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.
As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning. Told over a single day, with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Colour confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.
ABOUT SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA
SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA is the author of four poetry books and the short story collection How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the 2020 Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN America Open Book Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, and NOON. She has also written book reviews for The New York Times, and edited the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry (2021) and The Griffin Poetry Prize (2021). Born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, she was raised and educated in Toronto.
ABOUT MARTHA BAILLIE
Martha Baillie is the author of six novels and two nonfiction books. Her novel The Incident Report was longlisted for the Giller Prize and made into a feature film. Co-written with her late sister Christina Baillie, Sister Language was a 2020 Trillium Book Award finalist. The Search for Heinrich Schlögel was an Oprah Editors’ Pick and named as one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail and Quill & Quire. Her nonfiction can be found in Brick: A Literary Journal and her poetry has appeared in the Iowa Review. Baillie works part-time at Toronto Public Library and lives in Toronto.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Canada
CAD 0.00
