May 27-28, 2023
Queen’s Park Crescent

Diaspora Dialogues: The Ties That Bind

27may11:00 am12:00 pmDiaspora Dialogues: The Ties That BindWith Anuja Varghese, Zoe Whittal, and Catherine Hernandez

Speakers for this event

  • Anuja Varghese

    Anuja Varghese

    Author

    ANUJA VARGHESE is a Pushcart-nominated writer based in Hamilton, Ontario. Her work appears in several literary magazines and anthologies including Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). Her debut short story collection, titled Chrysalis (House of Anansi Press, 2023), explores South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, speculative lens.

    URL www.anujavarghese.com

    Author

  • Catherine Hernandez

    Catherine Hernandez

    Moderator

    CATHERINE HERNANDEZ (she/her) is a queer woman of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and Indian descent who married into the Navajo Nation. Her first novel, Scarborough, was a finalist for Canada Reads 2022, and the film adaptation, for which she wrote the screenplay, won eight Canadian Screen Awards. Her second novel, Crosshairs, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, and her latest novel, The Story of Us, was published in February, 2023.

    URL https://www.catherinehernandezcreates.com

    Moderator

  • Zoe Whittall

    Zoe Whittall

    Author

    Zoe Whittall is a bestselling novelist who has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and Canadian Screen Award winning TV writer. Her fifth novel is The Fake (Harpercollins, 2023). She lives in Picton, Ontario.

    Author

Event Details

Presented by Diaspora Dialogues

Anuja Varghese and Zoe Whittall discuss their new fiction releases Chrysalis and The Fake. The discussion will be moderated by Catherine Hernandez.

Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese
House of Anansi Press

A couple in a crumbling marriage faces divine intervention. A woman dies in her dreams again and again until she finds salvation in an unexpected source. A teenage misfit discovers a darkness lurking just beyond the borders of her suburban home.

The stories in Chrysalis, Anuja Varghese’s debut collection, are by turns poignant and chilling, blurring the lines between the real world and worlds beyond. Varghese delves fearlessly into complex intersections of family, community, sexuality, and cultural expectation, taking aim at the ways in which racialized women are robbed of power and revelling in the strange and dangerous journeys they undertake to reclaim it.

The Fake by Zoe Whittal
HarperCollins

After the death of her wife, Shelby feels more alone than ever—until she meets Cammie, a charismatic woman unafraid of what anyone else thinks and whose own history of trauma draws Shelby close. When Cammie is fired from her job and admits she is in treatment for kidney cancer, Shelby devotes all her time to helping Cammie thrive. But Shelby’s intuition tells her there are things about Cammie’s past that don’t add up. Could the realest thing about Cammie be that she’s actually a scammer?

Partners

Presented by Diaspora Dialogues