Almost Live episode #166
It’s a formula that never fails: combine six acclaimed and award-winning authors with one band and a table of friends for a night of art and delight! At the helm of the Vancouver Writers Fest flagship event is Musical Director, Benjamin Millman: a pianist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist hailing from Vancouver, whose mission is to pay homage to the great legacy of the Black American and African Diasporic Music he loves.
Millman’s band, The Oxymorons, will accompany readings by Canadian literary greats Roddy Doyle (The Women Behind the Door), Anne Enright (The Wren, The Wren), Richard Powers (Playground), Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Your Absence is Darkness), Brandon Taylor (The Late Americans), and Ayelet Tsabari (Songs for the Brokenhearted).
We’re thrilled to present the recording of this sold-out live event from the 2024 Festival with returning special guest Sarah Wang, VWF’s Programming Coordinator, and Ruth Ormiston, VWF’s Access Coordinator.
Presented in partnership with Vancouver Writers Festival
This event will not be recorded.
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Writer Bios
RODDY DOYLE is the author of thirteen novels, including the The Commitments, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1993, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and, most recently, The Women Behind The Door, published this year. He co-wrote the screenplay for The Commitments, and wrote the scripts for The Snapper and The Van. His most recent screen work was the script for Rosie, released in 2018. He is a co-founder of Fighting Words, which was set up to help and encourage children and young people throughout Ireland to write creatively. He lives in Dublin.
ANNE ENRIGHT won the Man Booker Prize and the Irish Fiction Award for her novel The Gathering. She has published two books of stories and her most recent novel was the internationally acclaimed The Forgotten Waltz, awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Anne Enright lives in Dublin.
BENJAMIN MILLMAN is a pianist, producer, and multi instrumentalist hailing from Vancouver. Specializing in a large range of genres and instruments, Benjamin’s performance credits are vast—you may have heard him leading Rnb, Funk, Pop or Jazz groups at countless Vancouver venues, or touring across Canada and the US.
RICHARD POWERS is the bestselling author of Bewilderment, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Overstory, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the William Dean Howells Medal, and a finalist for the Booker Prize; and The Echo Maker, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction. Powers is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Pushcart Prize, among other accolades. He lives in Tennessee.
JÓN KALMAN STEFÁNSSON’s novels have been nominated three times for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature and his novel Summer Light, and then Comes the Night received the Icelandic Prize for Literature in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious P. O. Enquist Award. His books include Heaven and Hell; The Sorrow of Angels, longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; The Heart of Man, winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize; and Fish Have No Feet, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. His latest book in English is Your Absence is Darkness. He lives in Reykjavík, Iceland.
BRANDON TAYLOR is an American writer. He is the author of The Late Americans, Real Life, and Filthy Animals.
AYELET TSABARI is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the Vine National Canadian Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction. Tsabari was a co-editor, with Leonarda Carranza and Eufemia Fantetti, of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction.
BENJAMIN MILLMAN is a pianist, producer, and multi instrumentalist hailing from Vancouver. Specializing in a large range of genres and instruments, Benjamin’s performance credits are vast—you may have heard him leading Rnb, Funk, Pop or Jazz groups at countless Vancouver venues, or touring across Canada and the US.
