Award-winning author and CBC host, Grant Lawrence, will visit Fernie this week to introduce his bestselling book, Adventures in Solitude.
Join Lawrence at 7 p.m. this Friday for a reading and slide show featuring his bestselling book Adventures In Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound at the Fernie Heritage Library.
Lawrence has become a well-known voice across Canada for his CBC Radio 3 Podcast and his appearances on CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, Spark, All Points West and On the Coast, and fans of independent music still turn up an old song from a record by The Smugglers, his defunct rock band.
Lawrence’s first book, Adventures in Solitude, has become a national bestseller and literary award-winner. In 2011, he took home a BC Book Prize, and was nominated for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, along with the prestigious Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
In Adventures in Solitude, Lawrence shares how Desolation Sound shaped his life in music and the history of Canada. Young Lawrence’s father bought a piece of land next to West Coast BC’s Desolation Sound marine park in the 1970s, just in time to encounter the gun-toting cougar lady, left-over hippies, outlaw bikers and an assortment of other characters. It was these early experiences, many alongside an influential hermit named Russell, which led Lawrence to a life of music and journalism far away from Desolation Sound. In his book, he returns to regale us with tales of ‘going bush,’ the tempting dilemma of finding an unguarded grow-op, and other laugh-out-loud stories from this unique place.
In addition to his radio appearances, Lawrence hosts many major music events, such as the Polaris Music Prize Gala, the Western Canadian Music Awards and various festivals around North America, and conducts music industry seminars and keynote addresses on music and media related topics. He still spends much of each summer at his cabin in the Sound. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, Canadian folk singer Jill Barber.
For more information about this free event, call the Fernie Heritage Library at 250-423-4458 or email information@fernieheritagelibrary.com
