Posted on Dec. 10: Main Street anthology features fiction, poetry of McMaster students

The author of Canada's current number one children's book, Hana's Suitcase, will speak at the book launch for the fifth volume of Main Street: The Anthology of the McMaster Certificate in Writing Program tonight (Tuesday, Dec. 10).

Author and CBC producer Karen Levine will give a 30-minute presentation on her remarkable true story, which documents a Japanese woman's effort to find out what happened to a young Jewish girl, Hana Brady, in the Second World War.

The evening will also feature Faculty of Humanities writer-in-residence Shyam Selvadurai, reading from his award-winning novel, Funny Boy.

Main Street, the award-winning anthology series published by the Centre for Continuing Education, features selected short Canadian fiction and poetry from 34 students in the writing program. Several Hamilton and area authors will also receive awards handed out during the evening's festivities.

Levine is a prize-winning producer with CBC Radio. She was formerly executive producer of As It Happens and currently works at This Morning as producer of the First Person Singular series. Karen has won the prestigious Peabody Award for her documentary Children of the Holocaust, and her production of Hana's Suitcase was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award, the Ontario Library Association's Silver Birch Award, and their new adult literacy award, The Golden Oak.

Selvadurai, McMaster's writer-in-residence, was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He came to Canada with his family at the age of 19. He has studied creative writing and theatre and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University. Funny Boy, his first novel, was published to acclaim in 1994 and won the Canadian W.H. Smith/Books First Novel Award, and in the U.S., the Lambda Literary Award. The novel was also named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. His second novel Cinammon Gardens has been published in Canada, the U.K., the U.S. and translated into six languages – Italian, French, German, Danish, Spanish and Hebrew. It was shortlisted for Canada's Trillium Award, as well as the Aloa Literary Award in Denmark and the Permio Internazionale Riccardo Bacchelli in Italy.

The Main Street book launch takes place Tuesday, Dec. 10 in the University Club from 7 to 9 p.m.