An Evening with Leslie Vryenhoek and Russell Wangersky

Our Spring Literary Series continues with married writers Leslie Vryenhoek and Russell Wangersky. They’ll be reading from their latest novels, and then join the festival’s Bruce Symaka in conversation.

Leslie’s Ledger of the Open Hand looks at the intimate power of money and emotional debt through the eyes of a woman trying to grab hold of her own life. With humour and insight, Ledger explores giving, taking, and our tendency to treat love as a balance sheet.

Russell’s Walt is a psychological thriller about a grocery store cleaner who collects discarded shopping lists. The lists Walt collects, written on everything from cancelled cheques to mortgage statements, give him a personal hold over those who ignore him. When a cold case squad questions him about the disappearance of his wife years before, the detectives realize that Walt may be involved in more than just his wife’s vanishing.

Leslie Vryenhoek is the author of Scrabble Lessons and Gulf. A Manitoban now based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, she is also the founding director of the Piper’s Frith writing retreat. Leslie’s diverse communications career has focused on local and international development, advanced education, and disaster response–sometimes all at once.

Russell Wangersky is a writer, editor, and columnist from St. John’s, Newfoundland. His five books include Whirl Away (Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist and winner of the Thomas Head Raddall Award for Fiction), Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself, a memoir of his years as a volunteer firefighter (a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book and winner of the BC National Award for Nonfiction), and The Glass Harmonica (BMO Winterset Award winner). He works at the St. John’s Telegram as the editorial page editor.