Tuesday, March 21, 6:00pm NOTE: The author, Catherine Hernandez WILL be joining this dinner!
PURCHASE TICKETS HERE!
Don't miss two other chances to meet Catherine Hernandez! WWU’s Center for Canadian-American Studies , Village Books, Evolve Chocolate + Café. and the Pickford Film Center are pleased to host Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough, a contender for Canada Reads 2022! This event is one of three appearances that Catherine Hernandez will make in Bellingham. Join us at the Pickford on March 21 for a screening of the film adaptation of Scarborough, and then dine with Catherine Hernandez that same evening at Evolve Café’s Life Between the Pages dinner! The grand finale will be an author presentation on Wednesday night in the Readings Gallery where we will also have copies of her brand new book, The Story of Us. Just released to Canadian markets, this book is not available in the US, except at Village Books!
Scarborough is a low-income, culturally diverse neighborhood east of Toronto, the fourth largest city in North America; like many inner-city communities, it suffers under the weight of poverty, drugs, crime, and urban blight. Scarborough the novel employs a multitude of voices to tell the story of a tight-knit neighborhood under fire: among them, Victor, a black artist harassed by the police; Winsum, a West Indian restaurant owner struggling to keep it together; and Hina, a Muslim school worker who witnesses first-hand the impact of poverty on education.
And then there are the three kids who work to rise above a system that consistently fails them: Bing, a gay Filipino boy who lives under the shadow of his father's mental illness; Sylvie, Bing's best friend, a Native girl whose family struggles to find a permanent home to live in; and Laura, whose history of neglect by her mother is destined to repeat itself with her father.
A poignant multi-voiced novel about the troubled yet noble lives of urban warriors living in low-income neighborhoods.
Scarborough is raw yet beautiful, disturbing yet hopeful ... It gives voice to people whose stories are often unheard, making this an important book that deserves a wide audience. -- Booklist
Catherine Hernandez (she/her) is an award-winning author and screenwriter. She is a proud queer woman who is of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and Indian descent and married into the Navajo Nation. Her first novel, Scarborough, won the Jim Wong-Chu Award for the unpublished manuscript; was a finalist for several awards including Canada Reads 2022. She wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Scarborough, which was nominated for 11 Canadian Screen Awards and won 8 including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Her second novel, Crosshairs, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award and made the CBC's Best Canadian Fiction, NOW Magazine's 10 Best Books, Indigo Best Book, and NBC 20 Best LGBTQ Books list of 2020. Her third novel, The Story of Us, will be published Feb 28 2023. She is currently working on a few television projects and her fourth novel.
