The Different Sides of the Story: Elise Levine at TIFA
235 Queens Quay W
Toronto, ON M5J 2G8
Canada
Through multiple perspectives in their books, Canadian Elise Levine (Say This) and Cameroonian Léonora Miano (Twilight of Torment) explore the impact of past events on our current lives, and the challenges that come with moving forward. In Levine’s Say This, the lives of two families become intertwined through a horrific murder, each struggling to come to terms with the pain and trauma the murderer has left behind. In Miano’s Twilight of Torment, four women speak to the same absent man—his mother, partner, friend and younger sister—each examining their journey and story as they intersect with many factors, including femininity and the long-term effects of a harrowing history for Africans today.
The discussion will take place at Lakeside Terrace (Harbourfront Centre) on Saturday, September 24 at 8PM ET. Tickets will be on sale August 29.
More details here.
Order your copy of Say This here!
Two crystalline novellas linked by one devastating crime: Say This is an immersive meditation on the interplay between memory, trauma, and narrative.
It’s a cold spring in Baltimore, 2018, when the email arrives: the celebrity journalist hopes Eva will tell him everything about the sexual affair she had as a teen with her older cousin, a man now in federal prison for murder. Thirteen years earlier, Lenore-May answers the phone to the nightmare news that her stepson’s body has been found near Mount Hood, and homicide is suspected. Following Eva’s unsettling ambivalence towards her confusing relationship, and constructing a portrait of her cousin’s victim via collaged perspectives of the slain man’s family, these two linked novellas borrow, interrogate, sometimes dismantle the tropes of true crime; lyrically render the experiences of grief and dissociation; and brilliantly mine the fault lines of power and consent, silence, justice, accountability, and class. Say This is a startling exploration of the devastating effects of trauma on personal identity.
Elise Levine’s Say This: Two Novellas was published in March 2022. She is also the author of the recent story collection This Wicked Tongue, the novels Blue Field and Requests and Dedications, and the story collection Driving Men Mad. Her work has appeared in publications including Ploughshares, Blackbird, The Gettysburg Review, and has appeared four times in Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Baltimore, MD, and teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.
