Madeleine Thien, winner of the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize, will appear at the Arden Theatre on March 29, 2017 for a spring STARFest event presented by St. Albert Public Library.

Thien’s latest work, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, focuses on an extended family in China, and the lives of two successive generations­—those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and their children who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story. In addition to winning the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the book was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. According to a Globe and Mail review Do Not Say We Have Nothing cements Madeleine Thien as one of Canada’s most talented novelists.