Book Launch: Two Days in Mayaro by Pamela Mordecai

Come celebrate the launch of critically acclaimed author Pamela Mordecai’s brand new short story collection, Two Days in Mayaro. Come celebrate the launch of critically acclaimed author Pamela Mordecai’s brand-new short story collection, Two Days in Mayaro. Set largely in the Jamaican diaspora, Mordecai’s stories are alive with sound and often driven by dazzling yet subtle reimaginings of lore, ancestry, and history. Join Mordecai, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Goose Lane Editions for an unforgettable evening of story and conversation. This event is free and open to the public, and books will be for sale courtesy of The Hawk Shop. Doors open at 6:30 pm. ABOUT THE BOOK: Only two months in Toronto, a young man gets in trouble at school for being restless and disruptive. A stone-throwing duppy smashes an elderly couple’s car window as they drive past a graveyard. An 80-year-old woman goes to great lengths to get the sugar needed to bake a cake for a soon-to-be-arriving visitor. Two Days in Mayaro brings together a new collection of stories that showcases the astonishing range and depth of Pamela Mordecai’s writing. Set largely in the Jamaican diaspora, Mordecai’s stories are alive with sound and often driven by dazzling yet subtle reimaginings of lore, ancestry, and history. Mordecai’s characters cope with the universal experiences of birth and death, joy and betrayal, reckoning with both their present and past. In this multidimensional universe, Mordecai mixes Jamaican Patwa with standard English and profanity with reverence, making her characters all the more real by introducing uncanny detail at just the right moment or by turning confusion on its head to make us laugh. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pamela Mordecai is a Jamaican Canadian author whose first short story collection, Pink Icing, received rave reviews and whose debut novel, Red Jacket, was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her work has been described as “brilliant” by Kamau Brathwaite and as “immaculately crafted” by Kwame Dawes and has been shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award (now the Otherwise Award) for writing in the speculative fiction or fantasy genre. She has written nine collections of poetry, including a trilogy about the life of Jesus in Jamaican Patwa (de book of Joseph, de book of Mary, and de Man) and a collection of new and selected poems, A Fierce Green Place. With her late husband, Martin, she also wrote a reference work called Culture and Customs of Jamaica. A recipient of the Institute of Jamaica’s Centenary and Bronze Medals for her contributions to Jamaican literature, she blogs at pamelamordecai.ca and writes the occasional critical essay. Two Days in Mayaro is her second collection of stories.