In Conversation with Helen Walsh

DD President Helen Walsh’s debut novel Pull Focus publishes September 7, 2021 in North America (Oct 7th in the UK). Set behind the scenes at an international film festival, the book explores the intersection of gender and power in the film industry and beyond. Join us Sept 9th, 5:30-6:30pm, as Helen sits down in conversation with author (and DD mentor) Rabindranath Maharaj. Free with registration. Copies of Pull Focus available HERE.

In Pull Focus, Jane has been appointed interim director of the Worldwide Toronto Film Festival after her boss has been removed for sexual harassment. Knives are out all around her, as factions within the community want to see her fail. At the same time, her partner, a fund manager, has disappeared, and strange women appear, uttering threats about misused funds. Yet the show must go on. As Jane struggles to juggle all the balls she’s been handed and survive in one piece, she discovers unlikely allies and finds that she’s stronger than she thinks.

Helen Walsh’s debut novel, Pull Focus, will be published September 7, 2021 by ECW Press in Canada and the US, and October 7, 2021 in the UK.

Walsh is also the founder and president of Diaspora Dialogues, a charitable organization that supports writers to turn their craft into a career, through mentorship, professional development, and opportunities to present and publish their work.

Previously, Walsh was publisher and president of the Literary Review of Canada, a monthly book review magazine; director of Spur, a festival of politics, arts and ideas; and a film/digital media writer & producer in Canada and the US.

Walsh lives in Toronto.

Rabindranath Maharaj is the award-winning author of: the novels, Fatboy Fall Down (2019, ECW Press); Adjacentland (2018, Wolsak and Wynn); The Amazing Absorbing Boy (2010, Knopf Canada; winner of the 2010 Trillium Book Award, the 2011 Toronto Book Award, and voted a CBC Canada Reads Top 10 for Ontario); A Perfect Pledge (2005, Knopf Canada; Farrar, Straus and Giroux US; a Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize finalist); The Lagahoo’s Apprentice (2000 Knopf Canada; a Globe and Mail and Toronto Star Notable Book of the Year); Homer in Flight (1997, Goose Lane Editions, a Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award finalist); The Picture of Nobody (2010, Good Reads/Harper Collins Canada) and the short story collections The Book of Ifs and Buts (2002, Vintage Canada), The Writer and His Wife (1996, Peepal Tree Press, UK), and The Interloper (1995, Goose Lane Editions; Nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book). Maharaj also co-edited with Dionne Brand and Tessa McWatt. an anthology of Canadian writing, Luminous Ink (2018, Cormorant).

To register for the event, visit: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/in-conversation-with-helen-walsh-tickets-169162528677