André Alexis, author of Fifteen Dogs, winner of the Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and Canada Reads, comes to Whistler as part of the Whistler Writers Festival’s spring series on Wednesday, May 21. Tickets are on sale now.

The Whistler Writers Festival presents Other Worlds: An Evening with André Alexis, May 21 at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre.

The Toronto author has several other award winning titles to his name, including Childhood, Days by Moonlight, The Hidden Keys, Pastoral, A (a novella), Beauty and Sadness, Asylum, and Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa. He has written librettos, was a Globe and Mail book reviewer, and was host and writer of CBC Radio’s “Radio Nomad” and “Skylarking.” 

Now, he brings his latest work to the Whistler Writers Festival’s spring series. He’ll be discussing his short story collection, Other Worlds, with Rebecca Wood Barrett, Whistler Writers Festival artistic director. 

“André is a staple of Canada’s literary landscape and his latest collection is absolutely dazzling,” Wood Barrett said. “His work taps into humanity’s deepest emotions and crafts new ways of understanding the world and each other. Other Worlds is stunning and I know our audience will appreciate what André creates with his words and newest work. I can’t wait to sit down with him and delve into the stories behind the stories.”

In Other Worlds, Alexis draws fresh connections between worlds: the ones we occupy, the ones we imagine, and the ones that preceded our own. He introduces us to characters during moments of profound puzzlement, and transports us from 19th century Trinidad and Tobago to small-town Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to contemporary Toronto.

Other Worlds reveals flashes of reckoning, defeat, despair, alienation, and understanding, all the while playfully using a multitude of literary genres, including gothic horror and isekai, and referencing works from greats like Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Yasunari Kawabata, Witold Gombrowicz and Tomasso Landolfi.

Other Worlds: An Evening with André Alexis is Wednesday, May 21 at 7:15 p.m. at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre in Whistler. Doors open at 7 p.m.  

Tickets are $30 and on sale now. 

The festival is also offering a chance to win two tickets to the event, alongside a copy of Alexis’s new book. Visit www.whistlerwritersfest.com for more information.