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Award-winning novelist Beth Powning will read from her latest book, A Measure of Light on Friday, April 10 at 7 p.m. in the Ganong Hall Lecture Theatre.

Beth Powning is known for her lyrical, powerful writing and the profound emotional honesty of her work. In 2010, she received the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for English Language Literary Arts. Her novel, The Sea Captain’s Wife, was short-listed for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and recently translated into French for distribution in Canada and France. A new edition of Powning’s bestselling book, Home: Chronicle of a North Country Life, is being released this fall. Her short fiction has been widely published in books, anthologies, and magazines such as Quarry, Prism International, Wascana Review, Tamarack Review, Fiddlehead, Canadian Fiction Magazine, and The Antigonish Review.

In 2014, Beth Powning was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of New Brunswick.

A Measure of Light tells the story of Mary Dyer, a Puritan who flees from religious persecution in Elizabethan England. She arrives in the New World only to find the Puritans in 1600s New England are as vicious and dangerous as the ones she has left behind. One of America’s first Quakers and among the last to face the gallows for her convictions, she defies death to champion religious freedom. In doing so, she is caught between faith, family and the cruel injustices of her time. This gripping historical fiction captures the spirit of a truly courageous woman struggling for women’s rights, liberty of conscience, intellectual freedom and justice. 

The reading is hosted by the Lorenzo Reading Series and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend. 

For more information contact Alison Hughes at (506) 654-3753 or email aehughes@unb.ca.