Talking with Miriam Toews about Women Talking

Internationally hailed for her unflinching representations of mental illness, suicide, and cultural/religious violence, she has garnered especial acclaim for her 2018 Women Talking. This novel draws on the recent atrocities that took place in a Bolivian Mennonite Old Colony. It has been translated into more than 25 languages and made the New York Times top 100 books of the year list. It has been compared to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale by critics, and by Atwood herself. Toews’ work is uncompromising, yet humorous, searingly intelligent, but always accessible.

Miriam Toews is the author of five previous bestselling novels: Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness (Canada Reads 2006, Canada Reads Canadian Bestseller of the Decade 2010), The Flying Troutmans, and Irma Voth, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust Marian Engel/ Timothy Findley Award. Her most recent novel, Women Talking, has been released to wide acclaim. Toews lives in Toronto.

Additional information: https://socrates.mcmaster.ca/events/talking-with-miriam-toews-about-women-talking/