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Award-winning author reading from book at North Island College

North Island College will welcome Frank MacDonald, an award-winning Canadian author who will read from his debut novel, A Forest for Calum, to the Comox Valley next week.

North Island College will welcome Frank MacDonald, an award-winning Canadian author who will read from his debut novel, A Forest for Calum, to the Comox Valley next week.Winner of the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, MacDonald who lives in Inverness, Cape Breton, where he was born, will visit the Stan Hagen Theatre on NIC’s Comox Valley campus March 29 at 7 p.m. for this free public event.Author Alistair MacLeod calls A Forest for Calum "an exceptional first novel ... finely rendered and heartfelt in its depth. Unique in presentation and rewarding to the end."Set in Shean, a fictional coal-mining town somewhere on the west coast of Cape Breton, in the 1960s, AForest for Calum explores complex lives of rural communities with dignity and humour.Described through the eyes of teenager Roddie Gillies, this coming of age novel recounts Roddie’s life, his struggles and his influences as he grows up under the wing of his traditional Gaelic widowed grandfather, Calum."A Forest for Calum is a delight and a wonder from start to finish,” stated the Globe and Mail. “Calum's attempts, with the help of Roddie and his friends, to preserve their history and their language, are enthralling and inspiring and ultimately heartbreaking and form the emotional core of a book that should, if there is any justice in the world, become a Canadian classic."MacDonald has conducted workshops in both fiction and non-fiction writing.His first novel, A Forest for Calum (Cape Breton University Press), was published in 2005 and was nominated for the Dartmouth Book Award. He has also published two collections of newspaper/magazine columns, Assuming I'm Right (Cecibu 1990), and How To Cook Your Cat (Cecibu-2003).The NIC Reads Committee, the North Island College Faculty Association Group Professional Development Fund and the President’s Office are helping to present this event.For more information and to reserve a seat, contact Mary Anne Guenther at 250-334-5001.— North Island College