Reading: NICOLE MARKOTIĆ

Nicole Markotić is a poet, novelist, short fiction writer and professor of Canadian and Children’s Literature at the University of Windsor. Her poetry titles include Minotaurs & Other Alphabets, Bent at the Spine, Whelmed and a recent translation of the Old English epic, Beowulf; her novels, Yellow Pages (on the inventions of Alexander Graham Bell), Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot (about a young woman who becomes a Mormon), and a recent Young Adults work, Rough Patch (a coming of age tale about a bisexual teen). She was poetry editor at Red Deer Press for six years and is currently a fiction editor at NeWest Press. Her academic interests include representations of disability in children’s literature, feminist critical and body theory and twentieth-century Canadian and North American literature and poetics.

Nicole’s Sunshine Coast reading will include selections from her Beowulf, a rollicking tale of toxic masculinity against the Beast from Outside. Markotić’s translation is both irreverently hilarious and meticulously researched. In the words of one reviewer, “Upending the tale with her fresh and enchanting style, Markotić gives a nod to previous translations, winks at canonical critics, bares historical biases, all while gifting transmogrifying pages that will whet your whimsy!”