27sep12:30 pm1:00 pm12:30 pm - 1:00 pm Hustle, Baby: Priya GunsModerated by Deborah Dundas
Event Details
Join Priya Guns for a solo presentation exploring the ideas, inspirations, and characters behind Hustle, Baby. With her signature sharp voice and fearless storytelling, Guns
Event Details
Join Priya Guns for a solo presentation exploring the ideas, inspirations, and characters behind Hustle, Baby. With her signature sharp voice and fearless storytelling, Guns offers a compelling look at family, ambition, survival, and the complexities of chasing a better future.
Speakers for this event
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Deborah Dundas
Deborah Dundas
Deborah Dundas is an award-winning writer and editor in Toronto. She is an Opinion editor at the Toronto Star, garnering a National Newspaper Project of the Year award and a Special Citation from the Canadian Journalism Foundation. She has covered business and politics in Canada and Northern Ireland, in TV and print. She has interviewed some of the world’s most recognizable writers including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and John Irving. She studied English and Political Science at York University and has an MFA from the University of King’s College. Her first book was “On Class,” published by Biblioasis in 2023; her third book, “Relative Truths: Stories of adoption, family and belonging” is out in February 2027.
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Priya Guns
Priya Guns
Priya Guns is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel Your Driver Is Waiting. A former teacher, she is an actor and works as an arborist in training. Her previous work has been published in short story anthologies, gal-dem, Spring magazine, and anonymously in the Guardian. Hustle, Baby is her second novel.
Books
Hustle, Baby
It’s hard enough to be a teenager at the turn of the millennium, and especially so for Dilo, who on top of juggling school and caring for her baby-cousin Maysha, is tasked with hustling to help her family get by. After Dilo’s born-again Christian mother, Mary, and Aunt Anji relocated the family from Sri Lanka fleeing the civil war, one thing’s become blindingly clear—the “rags-to-riches” fairytale they were promised is bullshit. The system is rigged, so sometimes you have to cheat to win.
Their family operates on the margins, working constantly to earn just enough to pay off their last meal. But they can only ignore stacks of overdue rent notices for so long, and when both matriarchs unexpectedly lose their jobs, desperation begins to set in. With eviction imminent, they are thrown a lifeline when they meet Mark, a swaggering day-trader, who promises to turn their small initial investment into thousands of dollars overnight on the stock exchange. At last, a miracle, and the family quickly become his apostles, recruiting investors by spreading the good word of his perpetual 10% returns. But they soon discover what really fuels Mark’s seemingly endless generosity, and when the markets turn they are left to navigate treacherous but familiar terrain. They must do what they always have, find a path where there isn’t one—survive.
With “a ferocity of voice that belongs to Priya Guns alone” (Camille Perri, NYTBR), Hustle, Baby is a fearless and feral novel about one family’s quest to live the good life, and what happens when we push those with nothing past their breaking point.
AuthorPriya Guns
PublisherPenguin Random House Canada
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