As one of the jury members for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, I’m pleased to announce that this year’s winner will visit Laurier Brantford.

Join me in conversation with Carol Shaben, author of Into the Abyss: How a Deadly Plane Crash Changed the Lives of a Pilot,a Politician, a Criminal and a Cop, on Wednesday, Nov. 13 from 10 to 11:20 am in RCW 203. All students, staff, faculty and community members are invited to attend.

At this event, I’ll be speaking one-on-one with Shaben, a Vancouver-based freelance writer, about her book, in which she reconstructs a 1984 commuter plane crash in northern Alberta that killed six passengers and wounded four others—including Shaben’s father, a prominent cabinet minister.

As the jury noted, Into the Abyss is a stylishly written, fast-paced tale of redemption that is gripping and engaging. “While the story is an expertly researched, detailed reconstruction of the crash and a call for better oversight of small, commuter airlines, its heart lies in the portraits Shaben draws of the crash’s survivors: her father, the pilot and an RCMP officer and the prisoner he was transporting. Through interviews and written documents, she paints a haunting portrait of the bond created among the survivors and how the crash affected their lives.”

Into the Abyss is a great read and copies are available at the Stedman Community Bookstore.

Update: I’m not the only one looking forward to this event:

@bgillesp Looking forward to our conversation #laurier #Brantford on Nov 13!

— Carol Shaben (@CarolShaben) October 29, 2013