In Conversation with Ann-Marie MacDonald

Join us on October 21, 2022 at 7:00 pm at The Trail Hub for a splendid evening of conversation as a beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magyk, love and identity. Interviewed by Janet Somerville, this is an evening you do not want to miss!

In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition.  But when Charlotte and her tutor’s explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition, and her world is upended. Charlotte’s passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.

ANN-MARIE MACDONALD is an award-winning novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcast host. Her writing for the stage includes the plays Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet), Belle Moral: A Natural History, and Hamlet-911, along with the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, and book and lyrics for the musical Anything That Moves. She is the author of the bestselling novels Fall On Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, and Adult Onset. Ann-Marie is a graduate of the Acting Program of The National Theatre School of Canada. In 2019 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of her contribution to the arts and her LGBTQ2SI+ activism. She is married to theatre director, Alisa Palmer, with whom she has two children.

Her first novel, Fall on Your Knees, was published by Knopf Canada as part of their inaugural “New Face of Fiction”. A critically acclaimed international bestseller, it was a finalist for the Giller Prize, and won the People’s Choice Award and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year. In 2002 it became an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Fall on Your Knees has been translated into nineteen languages. In 2021, on the 25th anniversary of the novel, Ann-Marie narrated a new audio version recorded by Penguin Random House Canada.

Ann-Marie’s second novel, The Way the Crow Flies, was published in 2003. An international bestseller and finalist for the Giller Prize, it was also a Good Morning America Book Club pick. It has been translated into thirteen languages.

JANET SOMERVILLE taught literature for 20 years in Toronto. Since 2015, she has been wholly immersed in Martha Gellhorn’s life and words, privileged to have ongoing access to Gellhorn’s restricted papers in Boston, Massachusetts.