Karen Joy Fowler & Allegra Goodman in Toronto

24 May 2017, 07:00 PM – 09:00 PM

Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre
427 Bloor St.
West Toronto
Admission Free

No registration required; reception after reading, books available for purchase and author signing
Literature lovers and science nerds unite!
Join novelists Karen Joy Fowler and Allegra Goodman for an evening of literary readings and conversation about scientific ethics and politics, chimpanzee cognition, lab rats, cancer research...and literature.

What happens when award-winning novelists known for lyrical prose, subtly nuanced characters, careful social observation, and irony start delving into the world of research science? Allegra Goodman and Karen Joy Fowler are among a growing cadre of novelists who have been doing just that in recent years.

In Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, a young woman tries to come to terms with the animal-human behavior experiments her psychologist father had conducted with her and her lost twin sister. Fowler’s sixth novel, it won the PEN/Faulkner Award, was shortlisted for the Booker, and was a New York Times Notable Book choice. Fowler’s other recent novels include Wit’s End and the bestselling The Jane Austen Book Club.

“... readably juicy and surreptitiously smart...” The New York Times Book Review

“This is a moral comedy to shout about from the treetops.” The Guardian

In Allegra Goodman’s Intuition, a varied cast of characters—from a business-minded oncologist to a scrupulous institute director and jealousy-plagued postdoctoral researchers—search for a viral cure to cancer amid the messy data, ambitions, personal rivalries, and funding crises at a prestigious research institute. Goodman’s other recent books include The Chalk Artist and The Cookbook Collector.

“Believe it or not, a thriller and a page-turner about scientific fraud. Brilliant.” The Guardian

“Intuition penetrates an absorbing, small world—to show us a larger one in which self-knowledge is as elusive as scientific achievement. And certainly as hard-won.” New York Daily News

This public event opens the academic conference “Narrating Science: The Power of Stories in the 21st Century.

Organized by the University of Guelph’s College of Arts and Fiction Meets Science