The Invincible Human Spirit: Linda Rui Feng & Kim Thúy 

Linda Rui Feng, Kim Thúy and Ann Y. K. Choi

The Invincible Human Spirit: Linda Rui Feng & Kim Thúy 

Linda Rui Feng, Kim Thúy and Ann Y. K. Choi

3:00pm

Friday, October 29, 2021

How many times can we start over before losing ourselves? Join us for an illuminating conversation on family lost and found amidst the turmoil of cultural warfare. Governor General Award-winning author Kim Thúy will present her virtuosic novel Em. Taking inspiration from historical events, Thúy sifts through layers of pain and trauma, revealing transcendent moments of grace. Set in Saigon, an abandoned baby is rescued by a young boy – the child of a long-gone American soldier. Presenting her debut novel Swimming Back to Trout River, Linda Rui Feng sets the narrative against the backdrop of China’s cultural revolution, following one father’s journey to reunite his family before his daughter’s 12th birthday.

Interviewer: Ann Y. K. Choi

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Conversation
Reading

How many times can we start over before losing ourselves? Join us for an illuminating conversation on family lost and found amidst the turmoil of cultural warfare. Governor General Award-winning author Kim Thúy will present her virtuosic novel Em. Taking inspiration from historical events, Thúy sifts through layers of pain and trauma, revealing transcendent moments of grace. Set in Saigon, an abandoned baby is rescued by a young boy – the child of a long-gone American soldier. Presenting her debut novel Swimming Back to Trout River, Linda Rui Feng sets the narrative against the backdrop of China’s cultural revolution, following one father’s journey to reunite his family before his daughter’s 12th birthday.

Interviewer: Ann Y. K. Choi

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

Conversation
Reading

Featured Authors

Linda Rui Feng
Linda Rui Feng was born in Shanghai and has lived in San Francisco, New York and Toronto. She is a graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities and is currently a professor of Chinese cultural history at the University of Toronto. She has been twice awarded a MacDowell Fellowship for her fiction and her prose and poetry have appeared in journals such as The Fiddlehead, The Kenyon Review, Santa Monica Review and Washington Square Review. Swimming Back to Trout River is her first novel.

Read more about Linda Rui Feng

Kim Thúy
Kim Thúy, born in Saigon, left Vietnam with the boat people at the age of ten and settled with her family in Quebec. A graduate in translation and law, she has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer, restaurant owner and commentator on radio and television. Kim Thúy has received many awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2010 and was one of the top 4 finalists of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2018. Her books have sold more than 850,000 copies around the world and have been translated into 29 languages and distributed across 40 countries and territories.

Read more about Kim Thúy

Ann Y. K. Choi
Ann Yu-Kyung Choi is an author and educator. Her novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award. Her writing has appeared in several publications including Quill & Quire, Writer’s Digest and the Toronto Star. Her debut children’s picture book, Once Upon An Hour, was released in 2020. Ann is the co-founder of The Authors Book Club, an initiative that connects authors with readers in Canada. She lives in Toronto.

Read more about Ann Y. K. Choi

3:00pm

Friday, October 29

What to read

Swimming Back to Trout River by , Em by ,
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