Date: March 2, 2010

Artist: Caterina Edwards

Open Space, in partnership with the University of Victoria Department of Writing, hosted award-winning Edmonton writer Caterina Edwards as part of its literary series Open Word: Readings and Ideas. Edwards will read at Open Space followed by an interview with Victoria writer Lynne Van Luven.

Caterina Edwards’s latest book Finding Rosa is a work of creative non-fiction that takes place during the time Edwards spent caring for her mother who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Edwards’s search for the memories of the woman who is disappearing before her eyes broadens to include the lost history of Rosa’s people and the place where she was born; Edwards travels to Istria, now part of Croatia, to get at the truth of her mother’s past. There she discovers the suppressed history of Istria — the ethnic cleansing of her mother’s people — and uncovers Rosa’s personal losses: her family’s exile, her father’s mysterious death and the roots of her own sense of never belonging.

Caterina Edwards’s previous book, the short story collection The Island of the Nightingales, won the 2000 Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Short Fiction. She has also published a novel, The Lion’s Mouth (NeWest Press 1982) and a book of novellas, Whiter Shade of Pale/Becoming Emma (NeWest Press 1992), as well as many short stories and essays in various magazines and anthologies. Her play Terra Straniera was produced professionally in Edmonton and published in 1990. Her other work of drama, The Great Antonio, is a full-length radio play broadcast by CBC in 2006. Edwards defines herself as a fiction writer until she co-edited two books of life writing by women: Eating Apples: Knowing Women’s Lives (NeWest 1994) and Wrestling With the Angel (Red Deer College Press 2000).  Edwards’s website is www.caterinaedwards.com

Open Word: Readings and Ideas was funded by The Canada Council for the Arts, CRD, KOTO Restaurant, Open Space and the University of Victoria Department of Writing.