Classics Made New: Mona Awad & Randy Boyagoda

Mona Awad, Randy Boyagoda and Heidi Reitmaier

Classics Made New: Mona Awad & Randy Boyagoda

Mona Awad, Randy Boyagoda and Heidi Reitmaier

9:00pm

Monday, October 25

Revisit the classics with Canadian authors Mona Awad and Randy Boyagoda in discussion about their latest novels and entertaining approaches to blending the old with the new. In All’s Well, Awad harnesses classic Shakespeare when a modern theatre professor struggling with chronic pain experiences the challenges of staging one of The Bard’s most maligned works with a rogue cast of characters. Dante’s Indiana, the sequel to Boyagoda’s Original Prin, is an hommage to Dante Alighieri, as Prin goes to a small town in Indiana where he must begin building a million-dollar Inferno-inspired theme park. Join us for this conversation to learn more about the inspirations behind these unexpected and hilarious mash-ups.

Interviewer: Heidi Reitmaier

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Conversation
Reading

Revisit the classics with Canadian authors Mona Awad and Randy Boyagoda in discussion about their latest novels and entertaining approaches to blending the old with the new. In All’s Well, Awad harnesses classic Shakespeare when a modern theatre professor struggling with chronic pain experiences the challenges of staging one of The Bard’s most maligned works with a rogue cast of characters. Dante’s Indiana, the sequel to Boyagoda’s Original Prin, is an hommage to Dante Alighieri, as Prin goes to a small town in Indiana where he must begin building a million-dollar Inferno-inspired theme park. Join us for this conversation to learn more about the inspirations behind these unexpected and hilarious mash-ups.

Interviewer: Heidi Reitmaier

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.

Conversation
Reading

Featured Authors

Mona Awad
Mona Awad is the author of Bunny and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize that won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Colorado Book Award and an Honorable Mention from the Arab American Book Awards. It was also longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. The recipient of an MFA in Fiction from Brown University and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver, she has published work in TIME, VICE, The New York Times Magazine, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Boston.

Read more about Mona Awad

Randy Boyagoda
Randy Boyagoda is the author of six books, including the novels Governor of the Northern Province, Beggar’s Feast, and Original Prin. His work has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize, and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the year and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. An essayist, book critic and radio columnist, he is a professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he lives with his wife and their four daughters.

Read more about Randy Boyagoda

Heidi Reitmaier
Heidi Reitmaier is currently the executive director of myseum, a museum that showcases history, culture and the architecture of Toronto. She has held leadership roles at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and has worked as a curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Tate Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Art London. She produced radio for the BBC, has written for Art Monthly, Art Forum and Tate Magazine, and she loves to read everyday.

Read more about Heidi Reitmaier

9:00pm

Monday, October 25

What to read

All’s Well by , Dante’s Indiana by ,
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