Join novelist, playwright, artist and actress Claudia Dey, in conversation with Marilo Nuñez, to discuss her new novel Daughter. A searing and hypnotic tour de force about a woman, long caught in her charismatic father's web, who strives to make a life—and art—of her own.
To be loved by your father is to be loved by God.
So says Mona Dean--playwright, actress and daughter to a man famous for one great novel, and in fruitless pursuit of the next, whose needs and insecurities exert an inescapable pull and exact an immeasurable toll on the women of his family: Mona, her sister, her half-sister, their mothers. His infidelity destroyed Mona's childhood, setting her in opposition to a cold, cruel stepmother who, though equally damaged, disdains her for being broken. Then, just as Mona is settling into her life as an adult and fledgling artist, he begins a new affair and takes her into his confidence. Mona delights--painfully, parasitically--in his attention. When he inevitably confesses to his wife, Mona is cast as the agent of disruption, punished for her father's crimes and ejected from the family.
Claudia Dey’s most recent novel, Heartbreaker, was a Northern Lit and Trillium Book Award finalist. It was named a best book of the year by multiple publications, and is being adapted for television. Her plays have been produced internationally, and nominated for the Governor General’s, Dora and Trillium Book Awards. Dey has worked as a film actress, a guest artist at the National Theatre School, and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto. Her fiction, interviews, and essays have appeared in The Paris Review ("Mothers As Makers of Death"), McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, Hazlitt and The Believer.
Marilo Nuñez is a Chilean Canadian playwright, director, actor and academic. She was the 2018 recipient of the Hamilton Arts Awards for Established Theatre Artist and was recently nominated for the Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize. She is the 2021-22 Playwright in Residence at Aluna Theatre (Toronto) and was a member of Natural Resources, Factory Theatre’s playwright’s unit for established writers in 2019. She was Playwright-in-Residence at Aluna Theatre in 2016 and was McMaster University’s first Playwright-in-Residence in 2018.
Event Details:
- This event will take place in the Studio Theatre at Theatre Aquarius, located at 190 King William Street. Please visit the Theatre Aquarius website for any questions regarding the venue.
- Doors will open at 6:30 PM, the event will start at 7 PM.
- There are 2 ticket options:
- Ticket for admission - $15
- Book + ticket option - $44.50
- If you purchase the book + ticket option you will receive a copy of Daughter at 15% off the retail price.
- Books purchased with the book + ticket option will be available for pick up at the event.
- A book signing will follow the talk. Additional books will be available to purchase on-site.
