Invitation: Reading and Discussion with Larissa Lai (Toronto)

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When and where: June 17, 2024, 7.15 pm, Augsburg University, room D 4056

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Larissa Lai is the prize-winning author of the novels When Fox was a Thousand (1995), Salt Fish Girl (2002), The Tiger Flu (2018) and The Lost Century (2022), the poetry volumes Sybil Unrest (2008, with Rita Wong), Automaton Biographies (2009) and Iron Goddess of Mercy (2021), and the monograph Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s (2014). Known for her nuanced exploration of race, gender, and sexuality as well as the creative reinterpretation of Chinese mythology in her work of speculative fiction in particular, her most recent The Lost Century is a historical novel that reimagines the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. Told retrospectively by an eyewitness on the eve of Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, it includes a range of characters and voices from Hong Kong and China as well as from Jamaica, Canada, and Europe, thus highlighting the temporal and spatial scope not only of macro- but also of micro-history.

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Larissa Lai will read from her work and discuss her understanding of writing and ‘poethics’ with us. Everyone is warmly welcome to this special event.

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Organized by the Chair of American Studies and the Institute for Canadian Studies at Augsburg University and sponsored by the Elite Graduate Program Ethik der Textkulturen.