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Westminster Bookmark’s monthly reading series returns with readings from award-winning hockey journalist Karissa Donkin (Breakaway) and celebrated short story writer Mark Anthony Jarman (Smash & Grab)! Hosted by acclaimed novelist and poet Fawn Parker, this free event takes place here at the shop (88 York St.) on Sunday, March 29th, 3 pm.
A timely reading from a timely book about women's professional hockey. The first reading in Fredericton from a shorty story writer The New York Times has called "a Canadian master of the form." You won't want to miss this!
About Breakaway:
When the first puck dropped in the Professional Women’s Hockey League in January 2024, it had been a long time coming. Women have been playing hockey since at least 1890 and playing professionally for decades. But until 2024, even the highest-level female players had never been compensated as professionals: some paid for their own gear and worked second jobs, earning a pittance, if anything, from their chosen profession.
In Breakaway, Karissa Donkin tells the story of the players’ efforts to create the PWHL, long before the first full season in 2024. Following the unnamed 2024 Montreal PWHL team, with some of the best players in the sport, like Marie-Philip Poulin and Erin Ambrose, Donkin takes readers through the League’s founding, the draft process, the practices, and the dramatic arc of the first season. Defying all expectations, with larger crowds and higher revenues than anticipated, this first season was a gamechanger for professional women’s sports leagues.
About Smash & Grab:
A former military policeman, a veterinarian, and a French poet walk into a bar and debate the Vietnam war. A couple of men who are part of a commune discover two dead bodies while out sailing. A woman hits a boy with her car and contemplates turning herself in. Two paramedics try to live and not burn out while dealing with so much death. A man on holiday in Venice is stalked by a pickpocket. A heartsick astronaut finds love on the moon.
In Smash & Grab Mark Anthony Jarman offers up a mischievous medley of stories that blur the lines between the real and the imagined. Continuing to chronicle the lives of the wayward and unlucky, it confirms its author as one the most adventurous guides to the absurdity of twenty-first century existence.
About the Authors:
Karissa Donkin writes about women’s hockey and the PWHL for CBC Sports and has worked in newspapers and broadcasting for more than a decade. Since 2016, she has been working with CBC’s Atlantic investigative unit, covering stories that regularly air on national programs across all of CBC’s platforms. Her recent work on New Brunswick’s Child Protective Services was profiled on The Current. She has won a National Newspaper Award and several Atlantic Journalism Awards for her investigative work. Her journalism was also nominated for the prestigious Michener Award. Breakaway is her first book.
Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Burn Man, Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. He is co-editor of a new literary journal CAMEL, and edited Best Canadian Stories 2023. His novel Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fiction. Widely published in Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia, Jarman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of New Brunswick. Burn Man was a New York Times Editor's Choice in 2024.
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Event Venue
88 York St, Fredericton, NB E3B 3N5, Canada
Tickets
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