Concordia Journal Home > Archives > May 7, 2009 issue >

Ricci and fellow alumni get ‘up close and personal’ 

Award-winning author Nino Ricci was invited by Advancement and Alumni Relations to join fellow Concordia alumni for a discussion of his new novel, The Origin of Species, at the J. A. DeSève Cinema during the city’s Blue Metropolis Festival last week. The event was moderated by Terence Byrnes, associate Professor in the Department of English and Ricci’s adviser when he defended his master’s thesis in creative writing here in 1987. That project become Ricci’s acclaimed first novel, Lives of the Saints.

Byrnes began the evening by engaging Ricci in a discussion that touched on such issues as the nature of the relationship between the author’s life and those of his characters and whether an adherence to literary theory or a focus on experience and narrative is more valuable to a novelist striving to create meaning.

After an open question-and-answer session, Ricci met those in attendance and signed copies of his latest novel as well as his contribution to a new series of biographies from Penguin Books, Extraordinary Canadians: Pierre Elliott Trudeau.