Heliconian Club

Join us for this season’s final salon featuring Bianca Marais, a burgeoning voice on the Canadian literary landscape.

Before moving to Toronto and turning to writing, Bianca Marais lived and worked in South Africa. For a time, she volunteered in Soweto, providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans and their caregivers, an experience that left an indelible imprint on her psyche. Using words and images, Bianca will demonstrate “how women in South Africa stepped into the breach to mother the motherless children that the AIDS pandemic created, how they were in their twilight years when they were suddenly called upon to lay their own children to rest and raise their grandchildren; how they didn’t allow poverty or hardship to break them, and how they almost single handedly raised the born-free generation, those children born after Nelson Mandela became president in 1994.” She will also touch on how her writing helped her come to grips with her background, and how art is often cathartic and necessary.

Marais’ debut work of fiction, Hum If You Don’t Know the Words, was a massive success, and her greatly anticipated second novel, If You Want to Make God Laugh, due out in July, promises to be just as compelling. A representative from Ben McNally Books will be on hand to take preorders for it and to sell copies of her first book as well.

BONUS: All those who pre-order If You Want to Make God Laugh will be entered for an awesome gift basket raffle!