{"id":1865,"date":"2019-02-20T11:11:38","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T19:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/?p=1865"},"modified":"2024-04-16T11:33:32","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T18:33:32","slug":"uvic-author-celebration-feature-just-let-me-look-at-you-by-bill-gaston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/2019\/02\/20\/uvic-author-celebration-feature-just-let-me-look-at-you-by-bill-gaston\/","title":{"rendered":"UVic Author Celebration Feature: Just Let Me Look at You by Bill Gaston"},"content":{"rendered":"

The annual UVic Author Celebration<\/strong> is coming up as part of Ideafest<\/a>. Join us as we celebrate authors from the UVic community who will read from their latest works.<\/p>\n

When<\/strong>: March 7, 2019
\nWhere<\/strong>: UVic Bookstore
\nTime<\/strong>: 2:00-4:00pm<\/p>\n

The author panel includes: Jason M. Colby (History), Patrick Friesen (Writing), Bill Gaston (Writing), and Lynne Marks (History). Jim Forbes (Director of Campus Services) will host and Jonathan Bengtson (University Librarian) will moderate.<\/p>\n

This week, we will highlight the books written by members of the author panel.<\/p>\n

Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood <\/em><\/strong><\/a>by Bill Gaston was released by Penguin Random House in 2018 and is a finalist for the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About the Book<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sons clash with fathers, sons find reasons to rebel. And, fairly or unfairly, sons judge fathers when they take to drinking.<\/p>\n

But Bill Gaston and his father could always fish together. When they were shoulder-to-shoulder, joined in rapt fascination with the world under their hull, they had what all fathers and sons wish for. Even if it was temporary, even if much of it would be forgotten along with the empties.<\/p>\n

Returning to the past in his old fishing boat, revisiting the remote marina where they lived on board and learned to mooch for salmon, Bill unravels his father\u2019s relationship with his<\/i> father, it too a story marked by heavy drinking, though one that took a much darker turn.<\/p>\n

Learning family secrets his father took to the grave, Gaston comes to understand his own story anew, realizing that the man his younger self had been so eager to judge was in fact someone both nobler and more vulnerable than he had guessed.<\/p>\n

Warm, insightful, and often funny, Just Let Me Look at You<\/i> captures every father\u2019s inexpressible tenderness, and the ways in which the words for love often come too late for all of us.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

<\/div>\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Bill Gaston<\/strong> came to the UVic Writing Department in 1998 following a dozen years in the Maritimes, mostly at UNB, Fredericton. There he was Director of the Creative Writing Program and, for a time, editor of Canada’s oldest literary journal, The Fiddlehead<\/em>. He’s also lived in Toronto, Winnipeg and France, and spent his formative years on the slopes of North Vancouver. He worked at the usual struggling-writer jobs, typically in universities but also in group homes \u2014 but the most exotic of these jobs were fishing guide, swamping for a cat at a logging show and playing hockey in the south of France. For decades he\u2019s led a more settled existence in Gordon Head, where he resides with writer Dede Crane. He is the author of seven novels and seven collections of short fiction, as well as a book of poems and a memoir,\u00a0Midnight Hockey<\/i>. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and twice for the Governor General\u2019s Award. His most recent novel,\u00a0The World<\/i>, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.<\/p>\n

Praise for the Book<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cUnder Gaston\u2019s quiet prose lies an ocean of pain and hard truths. Unsentimental and yet deeply poignant, his memoir will resonate with anyone who wanted more from a father than he could give.\u201d \u2014Trevor Cole<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book isn\u2019t just for fathers, sons or those who fish\u2026as a mother and daughter who does not fish, I nonetheless related to Bill\u2019s longing to understand the person who had raised him and helped shape his world view. A beautifully written memoir about the complex layers that exist between parent and child and the drive to find peace with our childhood ghosts.\u201d \u2014Cea Sunrise Person, author of North of Normal
\n<\/i>
\n\u201cI was heartbroken in the first five pages. Bill Gaston kicks and punches holes in the walls of time and recounts the battle between father and son, a battle that defines us whether we like it or not. For everyone who fights ghosts and knows they\u2019re never going to win, but keeps trying.\u201d \u2014Tom Wilson, author of Beautiful Scars<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cBill Gaston\u2019s unflinching courage shines through in his latest memoir, planting him firmly alongside other such top-shelf soul searchers as Mary Karr, David Adams Richards and Nick Flynn. Heartbreaking, hilarious and admittedly haunting, Just Let Me Look at You is a timely and timeless reclamation story, poignant and auspicious, written with heart.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Joel Thomas Hynes, author of We\u2019ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night<\/i>
\n<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual UVic Author Celebration is coming up as part of Ideafest. Join us as we celebrate authors from the UVic community who will read from their latest works. When: March 7, 2019 Where: UVic Bookstore Time: 2:00-4:00pm The author panel includes: Jason M. Colby (History), Patrick Friesen (Writing), Bill Gaston (Writing), and Lynne Marks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4704,"featured_media":1870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,17],"tags":[637,90,640,95],"class_list":["post-1865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-news","tag-637","tag-author-celebration","tag-bill-gaston","tag-uvic-authors"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1718\/2019\/02\/ideafest2019-book3.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1865"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1875,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions\/1875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/scholarlycommunications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}