Family Matters
Lakefield College School Bryan Jones Theatre
Sat. July 19 @ 11:30 am
Guests: Martha Baillie & Adelle Purdham
Moderator: Heidi Reimer
Two frank and revealing new memoirs focus on the challenges of family life, including mental illness and disability, while finding solace in the most intimate bonds.
Martha Baillie
Toronto writer Martha Baillie delves deep into the bosom of her own dysfunctional family with There Is No Blue, a trilogy of essays on love and loss that won the 2024 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. Described by The Guardian as “tough, tender and compelling,” There Is No Blue is “an elegy to the beautiful fight to keep a family together, and an ode to the devastating loss when things fall apart,” according to the prize jury. Martha Baillie is the author of several novels and works of non-fiction. Her previous Giller-nominated novel, The Incident Report, based on her part-time work as a librarian in Toronto, was recently adapted into a feature film, Darkest Miriam.
Adelle Purdham
In the series of essays that comprise I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, Adelle Purdham offers “a raw and intimate portrait of family, love, life and relationships,” with a special focus on the challenges of raising a daughter with Down syndrome. A native of Peterborough who currently teaches creative writing at Trent University’s Traill College, Purdham is an educator and disability activist whose prose and poetry has been widely published in literary journals, anthologies, magazines and newspapers. I Don’t Do Disability is her first book.
Heidi Reimer
Heidi Reimer is a novelist and writing coach whose first highly praised novel, The Mother Act, “is worthy of a standing ovation,” according to Publisher’s Weekly. She lives in Prescott, Ont.