Vancouver Writers Fest presents The Fiction of Belonging, with Derek Mascarenhas, author of Coconut Dreams.

Canada’s new generation of authors write powerfully to the challenge of balancing cultures and communities. Derek Mascarenhas’ nationally lauded Coconut Dreams traces Indian Canadian Aiden and Ally Pinto’s youth, growing up in a predominantly white Canadian suburb. First-generation cultural expectations clash with second-generation expectations as Jamaican Canadian Kara Davis searches for authenticity in Zalika Reid-Benta’s sharp-witted Frying Plantain, praised by Quill and Quire as “honest and penetrating.” In Hassan Ghedi Santur’s The Youth of God, teenage Somali immigrant Nuur is pulled between his religious calling and his academic gifts. Deftly capturing contemporary Canada, these authors speak to how, while everyone’s path to belonging may look different, none of us are alone in our journeys. Moderator: Anne Fleming