Fox book cover
UWinnipeg’s award winning writer, Margaret Sweatman, is launching a new edition of her book Fox, on Tuesday, December 5, 2017 at 7:00 pm, at McNally Robinson Booksellers (1120 Grant Avenue). The launch includes a discussion with Alison Calder about the writing and legacy of Sweatman’s Fox.
Fox moves on quick and elegant feet through the terror and exhilaration of Winnipeg’s 1919 General Strike, the most turbulent period of the city’s history. In a novel of remarkably vivid kinetic power, the collision of the wealthy and working classes after the First World War becomes a backdrop for the heady conflict between desire and human idealism. Fox is a brilliant contemporary filter for the social gospel of the day. Clamouring newspaper headlines and the passionate rhetoric of the new Left echo throughout the Establishment — the languid, dreamlike Crescentwood world of Eleanor and MacDougal, Mary and Drinkwater. The cushion of luxury is scant protection when words like ‘sedition’ and ‘Marxism’ explode in their midst, confronting them with the bigotry, greed and ambition of the post-war years.
Sweatman teaches English at UWinnipeg and writes novels, stories, plays, song lyrics, libretti, and essays. Her novels have won the McNally Robinson and the Margaret Laurence Awards; as well as the Rogers Writers Trust Award, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and the Carol Shields Award.
Margaret Sweatman, photo supplied
Her plays have been produced by Prairie Theatre Exchange, Popular Theatre Alliance, and the Guelph Spring Festival. She has performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, and the National Academy Orchestra, as well as with her own Broken Songs Band (vocals and harmonica). With her husband, composer Glenn Buhr, Margaret won a Genie Award 2006 for Best Song in Canadian Film.
In addition to FOX, Sweatman is the author of the novels Sam and Angie, When Alice Lay Down with Peter, The Players, and Mr. Jones. She’s at work on a novel set during the American War in Vietnam.
