Eleanor Catton & Michael Helm | Luminato

Born in Canada and brought up in New Zealand, Eleanor Catton made her literary debut in 2007 with The Rehearsal, an award-winning novel noted for its unusually stylized language and its in-depth exploration of the teenage psyche. Britain's Daily Mail called her the "golden girl of fiction," while the London Times described her as "a starburst of talent . . . an author wholly different from anyone else writing today."

Joining her is Saskatchewan-born Michael Helm, hailed by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the country's very best writers. Helm's 1997 debut novel, The Projectionist, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and its successor, In the Place of Last Things, was a finalist for both the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the 2004 regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book. He will read from his just-published novel, Cities of Refuge.

"MICHAEL HELM IS A WRITER TO WATCH."
- THE GLOBE AND MAIL

"IN A FIERCLY COMPETITIVE WORLD FOR NEW NOVELISTS, ELEANOR CATTON HAS NOT ONLY SHAKEN THE BARS BUT BROKEN THROUGH."
- GLASGOW SUNDAY HERALD

Authors

Eleanor Catton was born in 1985 in London, Ontario, and raised in Canterbury, New Zealand. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal, was the winner of the 2009 Betty Trask Award, the New Zealand Society of Authors Best First Book Award for Fiction, and the Adam Prize. It was recently shortlisted for the 2009 Guardian First Book Award (winner to be announced in December), and longlisted for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Catton currently lives in Iowa City, having won a Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship to study at the internationally renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Michael Helm is the author of The Projectionist, a finalist for The Giller Prize, In the Place of Last Things, a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and a regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, and, most recently, Cities of Refuge. His writings on fiction, poetry, and photography have appeared in North American newspapers and magazines, including Brick, where he serves as editor. He teaches at York University, in Toronto.

Moderator

SUSAN G. COLE is a Toronto-based author, editor and playwright. She has written two books on violence against women and pornography, Pornography and the Sex Crisis and Power Surge: Sex Violence and Pornography (both Second Story Press) and is the author of the hit play A Fertile Imagination. She is currently the books and entertainment editor at NOW Magazine, Canada's premiere news and entertainment weekly, contributes a column to Herizons Magazine and can be heard as part of the Media and the Message panel on Talk 640 radio every Thursday morning.