The Winter Book Club with Ethan Hawke

Join us for our Winter Book Club event, featuring award-winning actor and screenwriter Ethan Hawke in an exclusive Canadian event for his novel, A Bright Ray of Darkness. Be one of the first to read this highly-anticipated new work, then tune in March 14 for a live event moderated by Jen Sookfong Lee, including a rare audience Q&A session with the author himself.

Ticket buyers to our Winter Book Club will receive a hardcover of A Bright Ray of Darkness as part of their purchase. Moderated by Festival author and longtime podcast host Jen Sookfong Lee, this will be an incredible event to kick off the Festival's 2021 Book Club season.

As an accomplished actor, screenwriter, director and author, Ethan Hawke has commanded audiences for the screen, on the stage, and between the pages of some of this generation's most memorable and evocative stories. A Bright Ray of Darkness, this master storyteller's first novel in nearly twenty years, evokes the bracing whirlwinds of fame and fortune––and the price we pay for each. 

Hawke's narrator is a young man on the cusp of greatness, disgusted with himself after the collapse of his marriage, and still hoping for a reconciliation that would allow him to forgive himself. As he clumsily, and sometimes hilariously, tries to manage the wreckage of his personal life, what saves him is theater and the challenge of performing the role of Hotspur in Henry IV as a debut Broadway actor. Searing, raw, and utterly transfixing, A Bright Ray of Darkness is a novel soaked in rage and sex, longing and despair; and ultimately becomes Hawke's passionate love letter to the world of theater.

 

The first 300 copies of the book to be picked up (or shipped) are autographed by the author. (Update on March 1st: supplies of signed copies are running low. There's a good chance that pickups completed in the next few days, and orders for shipping placed in the next few days will be able to get one. We're unable to guarantee at time of booking that your copy will be signed.)

Books may be picked up at Granville Island’s Festival House between Tuesday, February 2–Friday, February 5 between 9am-5pm, or can be shipped to residential addresses for a small fee. Please note your preference while confirming your ticket. Alternative arrangements can be made for orders to be picked up after February 5, including evening & weekends as needed, but are by appointment only.

Sunday, March 14 at 4pm PT/7pm ET

Ticket & book: $40 plus fees
Optional shipping: $10

 

Presented in partnership with SFU Continuing Studies.

 

 

Community Partners: VIFF and Bard on the Beach

         

 

AUTHOR BIO

A four-time Academy Award nominee, twice for writing and twice for acting, ETHAN HAWKE has starred in the films Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, Gattaca, and Training Day, as well as Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise trilogy and Boyhood. He is the author of Rules for a Knight, The Hottest State, and Ash Wednesday. He lives in Brooklyn with his four children and his wife.

 

INTERVIEWER BIO

JEN SOOKFONG LEE‘s books include The Conjoined, nominated for International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, The End of East, Gentlemen of the Shade, Chinese New Year, and Whatever Gets You Through. She teaches at The Writers’ Studio Online with Simon Fraser University, edits fiction for Wolsak & Wynn, and co-hosts the literary podcast, Can’t Lit.

 

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