Author Holly Luhning Reading at UNB Fredericton

Holly Luhning will be reading from her new novel, Quiver, published by HarperCollins Canada, on Monday, January 16th at 8 pm in the Alumni Memorial Lounge at UNB.

Quiver, Luhning's first novel, is the thrilling story of Danica, a forensic psychologist from Canada who works at the Stowmoor Hospital in London, England. Danica is drawn into a strange, gothic landscape by her celebrity patient, Martin Foster, who is convicted of branding and murdering a teenage girl, and by her glamorous friend, Maria, who arrives in London for archival research. Both figures have connections to the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess, Eizabeth Bathory, who famously tortured and killed over six hundred young girls in order to bathe in their blood. Bathory believed the bloody ritual would preserve her youth and beauty. As Danica's fascination with Bathory develops she is compelled to explore a dangerous world of violence and obsession that ultimately questions what she is willing to risk to satisfy her attraction to the legend.

Holly Luhning is a graduate of the UNB Creative Writing MA programme, and later completed a Ph.D in the literature of 18th-century madness and theories of the body. In addition to her academic writing, Luhning has published two books of poetry, Sway (2003) and Plush (2006), and has received a Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor's Arts Award. Quiver, Luhning's debut novel, was described by the National Post as "fast and wicked and dark," and is a Globe and Mail Top 100 pick for 2011.

The reading is presented by the UNB English Department, the Canada Council for the Arts, the UNB Fredericton Bookstore, and The Fiddlehead.

Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.

Winter 2012 UNB Reading Series
Holly Luhning	16 Jan	Alumni Memorial
Tammy Armstrong & Nick Thran	15 Feb	Memorial Hall
Lynn Davies & Sue Goyette	15 Mar	Alumni Memorial
Amy Jones & Rebecca Rosenblum	29 Mar	Memorial Hall
Linden MacIntyre	12 Apr	Memorial Hall

Documentary Fiction and The Death of Donna Whalen

We’re still enjoying summer days, but we’re also drawing close to the fall season of new books. One title I’m particularly curious about is Michael Winter’s The Death of Donna Whalen, due out at the end of August. The novel centres on the murder of Donna Whalen and the trial of her accused boyfriend Sheldon Troke. Winter incorporates trial transcripts and verbatim court testimonies in the work; his publisher, Penguin, describes the novel as “documentary fiction.”

The practice of incorporating historical or “real-life” events in a fictional work is common. But the term “documentary fiction” isn’t one I’ve often heard applied to a novel. So I Googled it and came up with a New York Times article titled “ ‘Documentary’ Fiction.” The article begins: “The question of historical fiction has been tremendously threshed over these last months. Very likely there is nothing new left to say about it.” The article, dated October 12, 1901, goes on to discuss Rudyard Kipling’s work.

Clearly, authors and audiences have a long and complicated relationship with history, storytelling, and “the truth.” Right now, our pop culture is fairly obsessed with the concept of reality. But while celebrity blogs and TV shows like The Hills, Jersey Shore, and The Bachelorette may operate under an overarching premise of reality, they are often purposefully ambiguous regarding what events in their narratives are real or staged. These programs are very different in their content, message, and intended audience from historical fiction, memoirs, biography, and Winter’s documentary fiction. But perhaps the proliferation of multiple mediums that simultaneously entwine, yet differentiate between fiction and fact speaks to a persistent and increasingly fraught cultural preoccupation with one’s ability to identify truth.

On the other hand, maybe an ambiguity between fact and fiction simply contributes to quality of storytelling. We read and write stories to learn about ourselves, others, the world we inhabit. Is there value in attempting to define or identify why and how we blur the categories, or should we embrace E.L Doctorow’s sentiment that “[t]here is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.”? In choosing to write documentary fiction, Winter may satisfy cultural desires for both fact and story, which in turn allows him to tell Whalen’s story in a way that resonates deeply with his audience. 

Holly Luhning

— Her first novel, Quiver, is forthcoming with HarperCollins in January 2011.