21. Cracks In The Foundation

1. Cracks in the Foundation

Alicia Elliott with Tricia Knowles 

Readings and Conversation 

Bellevue 

11:30 – 12:30 pm 

Event Sponsor: 

 

Arts Partner: LodgePole Arts Alliance

And Then She Fell may be Alicia Elliott’s fiction debut, but it has readers in its spell. Join Tricia Knowles for a conversation with Alicia about this gothic horror-tinged story of inherited trauma, false allyship, and the secrets that upend a new mother’s not-so-perfect life. This is an electric novel critics are calling haunting, surreal, visionary, propulsive, ethereal, and complex. 

Alicia Elliott 

Alicia Elliott is a Tuscarora writer and editor from Six Nations of the Grand River. She has written for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Hazlitt and many others. She's had numerous essays nominated for National Magazine Awards, and her essay “A Mind Spread Out on the Ground” won Gold. Her short fiction has been included in Best American Short Stories, Best Canadian Stories, and Journey Prize Stories. Alicia was chosen by Tanya Talaga as a recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Her first book, A Mind Spread Out on The Ground, was a national bestseller in Canada. It was also nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. 

She is currently creative nonfiction editor at The Fiddlehead, associate nonfiction editor at Little Fiction | Big Truths, and a consulting editor with The New Quarterly.  

Her latest book is her fiction debut, And Then She Fell, a gripping novel about Indigeneity, motherhood and mental health that follows a young Mohawk woman who discovers that the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences. Author Eden Robinson praises Alicia’s “meticulous prose,” calling it “an agile portal through the narrator’s complex inner life, the tensions, and fractures that surface when the trappings of success hide the weight of intergenerational trauma, racism, sexism, and the unwieldy expectations of Motherhood. And Then She Fell saves us from devastation by the grace it shows its characters.” Heather O’Neill calls it "shocking, riveting, uncomfortable, gorgeous and visionary. Alicia Elliott destabilizes the reader and forces them to confront the horror of otherness. The cannibalism of Indigenous culture by academia is portrayed in a grotesque tableau that rivals the worlds of Jordan Peele...  Elliott's true gift to the reader is a new perspective on Indigeneity which is both humbling and earth-shattering." 

Alicia lives in Brantford, Ontario, with her husband and child. 

Tricia Knowles 

Tricia Knowles (she/her) is a queer arts promoter and cultural curator, who has a passion for creative placemaking and for crafting interactive, immersive events which inspire residents to be part of the change they want to see in their community. She holds a certificate in Cultural Planning and Development from UBC and a diploma in Radio and Television Arts (Broadcast Journalism) from NSCC. 

Tricia is an activist who strives for connection of self in tandem with the cycles of nature. She supports dismantling the patriarchy, female and non-binary empowerment, learning new ways to de-colonize and de-program how we show up in the world. She is a lover of both old-timey and contemporary circus and is a stilt walker and costumer. Other joy practices include swimming, bicycles, sex, dancing, foraging for mushrooms and herbs, and getting lost in a fabulous book. 

She is currently the Marketing & Communications Manager for PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver in addition to her role as Marketing Director with Kingston WritersFest.