Description

“Mothers and Sons”

Elizabeth Hay goes behind the scenes of a family novel. She will talk about writing His Whole Life, in which the bond between a mother and son deepens even as the family comes apart.

All Keynote Speaker Sessions are bi-lingual, included in each Conference Package, and are available for Single Ticket purchase. Venue: Hotel Real de Minas Ballroom.

Meet Elizabeth Hay

Elizabeth Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. She was a finalist for or won The Giller Prize twice (for Late Nights on Air and A Student of Weather) and has won numerous other literary awards including the CAA Mosaid Award for Fiction, and the Torgi Award. Twice she has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.

In 2002, she received the Marian Engle Award, presented by the Writers’ Trust of Canada to an established female writer for her body of work — including novels, short fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Her prize-winning works include Late Nights on Air, A Student of Weather, Small Change, and Garbo Laughs.

Hay was born in Owen Sound, Ontario. She lived in England for a year when she was fourteen, and traveled more as a young adult. For ten years, she was a broadcast journalist for CBC.

About her radio career, she says, “Good radio writing is similar to any good writing. It’s direct and economical and intimate and full of detail. Also, it sets your visual imagination working.”

Hay spent several years in Mexico as a freelance writer, and it was here in Mexico that she met her husband, Mark Fried. They have two children.

They lived in New York for six years, but Liz was homesick for Canada, so they moved back to Ottawa in 1992 and have lived there ever since.