Join award-winning author and journalist Alisa Smith as she celebrates the release of her debut novel, Speakeasy (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95) with a book launch.
=0D=0A=The event will feature readings by Alisa Smith and performance artist Valentina Cardinalli as well as musical performances by folk artist Pulsating Bridge and fuzz-pop band The Fences of Fairview. Books will be available for sale (cash only). Admission is free and all are welcome.
=0D=0A=Speakeasy follows Lena Stillman, a former undetected outlaw who joined Bill Bagley’s infamous Depression-era Clockwork Gang when they robbed the bank she worked at. A decade later, Lena has done her best to put her criminal past behind her. An elite codebreaker at the military base on Vancouver Island, she intercepts Japanese radio transmissions and avoids personal questions. It’s easy to keep her past locked away—until Bill is sentenced to hang. At the house she bought under a fake name, Lena receives mysterious messages. At work, she is assigned to root out a spy at the base because of her skill, and as the war draws closer to Canada, even her new friends become suspects.
=0D=0A=Alisa Smith is an award-winning journalist and author. Her bestselling first book, The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (Vintage Canada, 2009), won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, the Canadian Culinary Book Award and the American Cordon d’Or Award of Literary Merit. She is currently pursuing a designation as a forensic accountant. Smith lives in Vancouver, BC, where she is working on the sequel to Speakeasy, Doublespeak.
=0D=0A=Valentina Cardinalli drifts around doing multi media visual art, performance art, music and writing. Her main focus is projects that involve and engage the audience and the community.
=0D=0A=Pulsating Bridge is Angus Barter, musician, poet, photographer, heartist, sky looker, guitarist in Moths & Locusts and bassist in Custom Trip. Born in the Boundary, he lives on Vancouver Island raising poultry and spirits.
=0D=0A=The Fences of Fairview is a five-member alternative fuzz-pop collective. Their latest release, "Super Hero", can be found on Nuclear Free Nanaimo Volume 2 (NoiseAgonyMayhem Records, 2016).
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