Artist: Gill Adamson (Toronto)

Date: March 16 and 17, 2011 

Open Space, in partnership with the University of Victoria Department of Writing, hosted award-winning Toronto novelist Gil Adamson for the season finale of its literary series Open Word: Readings and Ideas. The reading at Open Space was followed by an interview with Victoria writer John Gould as well as a second public reading at the University of Victoria on March 17, 2010.

Gil Adamson’s first novel and latest book is The Outlander. Set in Alberta’s early 1900s, it tells the story of Mary Boulton, a young woman recently “widowed by her own hand.” As Mary flees into the mountains to escape the retaliation of brothers-in-law who track her like prey, she encounters characters of all stripes: unsavoury, wheedling, greedy, lascivious, self-reliant and, occasionally, generous and trustworthy. Adamson weds her brilliant literary style to the gripping, moving picaresque tale of one woman’s deliberate journey into the wild.

Gil Adamson is the author of two books of poetry, Primitive and Ashland, as well as the book of linked short stories Help Me, Jacques Cousteau. The Outlander has been nominated for the Commonwealth Prize and the Trillium Award and has won the Drummer General’s Award, the Dashiell Hammett Award for Crime Writing, the ReLit Award and the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was also one of five books chosen for Canada Reads 2009, defended by actor Nicholas Campbell of Da Vinci’s Inquest. A movie adaptation is currently in the works from Xingu Films (Moon), Strada Films (Fugitive Pieces) and Triptych Media (Emotional Arithmetic).

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