“Pluck”, an author reading with Donna Morrissey

All are welcome to join us this evening for an author reading with local author, Donna Morrissey, as she shares with us, her recently published memoir, “Pluck”.

The presentation will be shared online via ZOOM webinar and by phone via teleconference, and you may join us from where ever you wish – by clicking on the ZOOM webinar link following below,

Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device: Please click this URL to join. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84659933009?pwd=b2V0bHJ2WjVKai9xVzFKai85Rm80UT09
Passcode: 174816

or by phone – please dial, 1(800) 974-5902, and then enter the Conference ID, 6217271.

** Closed Captioning function (voice to text) is available through the ZOOM webinar.

* For assistance with the ZOOM technology during tonight’s author event, please contact Cristal at the New Glasgow Library, (902) 752-8233.

About the Book:

A deeply personal account of love’s restorative ability as it leads renowned novelist Donna Morrissey through mental illness, family death, and despair to becoming a writer–told with charm and inimitable humour.

When Donna Morrissey left the only home she had ever known, an isolated Newfoundland settlement, at age 16, she was ready for adventure. She had grown up without television or telephones but had absorbed the tragic stories and comic yarns of her close-knit family and community. The death of her infant brother marked the family, and years later, Morrissey suffers devastating guilt about the accidental death of her teenage brother, whom she’d enticed to join her in the oilfields. Her misery was compounded by her own misdiagnosis of a terminal illness, all of which contributed to crippling anxiety and an actual diagnosis of PTSD. Many of those events and themes would eventually be transformed and recast as fictional gold in Morrissey’s novels.

In another writer’s hands, Morrissey’s account of her personal story could easily be a tragedy. Instead, she combines darkness and light, levity and sadness into her tale, as her indomitable spirit and humour sustain her. Morrissey’s path takes her from the drudgery of being a grocery clerk (who occasionally enlivens her shift with recreational drugs) to western oilfields, to marriage and divorce and working in a fish-processing plant to support herself and her two young children. Throughout her struggles, she nourishes a love of learning and language.

Morrissey layers her account of her life with stories of those who came before her, a breed rarely seen in the modern world. It centers around iron-willed women: mothers and daughters, wives, sisters, teachers and mentors who find the support, the wind for their wings, outside the bounds given to them by nature. And it is a mysterious older woman she meets in Halifax who eventually unleashes the writer that Morrissey is destined to become.

An inspiring and insightful memoir, Pluck illustrates that even when you find your self unravelling, you can find a way to spin the yarns that will save you–and delight readers everywhere.

About the Author:

Donna Morrissey has published six nationally best selling novels. She has received awards in Canada, the U.S. and England and her novel, Sylvanus Now was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. Donna’s fiction has been translated into several different languages. She was nominated for a Gemini for her script, The Clothesline Patch, her novel Sylvanus Now was shortlisted for the Commonwealth prize, and her latest novel, The Fortunate Brother, spent six weeks on the best seller list, and won the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel of 2017. Her memoir, Pluck was released this year (2021) by Penguin, Canada and quickly hit the bestsellers list. For more information, please visit Donna’s website, www.donnamorrissey.com .

https://www.facebook.com/events/4374464172658390/