October 30, 2024

The View From Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed Book Launch visits Markdale's Marilynne Restaurant November 20

BY SOUTHGREY.CA STAFF — Local author Gwen Lamont will launch her new book The View From Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed on Wednesday, November 20 at Marilynne Restaurant. The event kicks off at 5:30 pm and continues until 7:30 pm with an author reading, book signing, drinks and nibbles. Tickets are $50 each and include one bottle of Into the Light White wine and one drink of choice during the evening.

Lamont's Book Launches have been making the rounds in southwestern Ontario, attracting good size crowds in Parry Sound, Kincardine and Southampton through the Summer and have graced halls and country clubs from Hanover and Collingwood to Stratford and London this Fall.

Gwen's official bio reads as such:

Due to various misadventures Gwen Lamont was not able to complete grade nine yet today she holds a BA in sociology, a BSW, an MSW, and an MFA in Creative Non-fiction. Gwen is the recipient of two academic awards for scholarship. Gwen’s major qualitative master’s research project, The Subjective Experience Of Men Who Murdered Their Intimate Partners, took two years, involved many prison interviews, hundreds of hours of data analysis and many months of writing. Gwen graduated Summa Cum Laude.

As a social worker, Gwen focused on work with abused women, vulnerable children and victims of violence. For the last seven years of her career she was a psychotherapist with a specialty in counseling teenagers, trauma victims and distressed couples.

In 2019, when Gwen graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non-fiction from University of King’s College, Halifax, Ms. Lorri Neilsen Glenn, one of Gwen’s professors, noted: The View From Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed is a one-of-a-kind story and Gwen’s fresh and distinctive voice makes it even more compelling. I predict this book will be one of the strongest to come out of the MFA program to date.

Gwen was shortlisted for the 2018 Geist Postcard Contest for What’s in A Smile and long-listed for the 2023 CBC Non-Fiction Prize for her short story Survivor’s Guilt, from over 2,300 entries across Canada.

Gwen lives on a vineyard between two ghost towns in rural Annan, Ontario where she writes and also is managing partner of Coffin Ridge Boutique Winery.

Her memoir has received many rave reviews:

"This remarkable coming-of-age story is a Canadian Glass Castle with a chilling twist, one that will haunt you long after you've been spell-bound. I couldn't put it down." — Plum Johnson, best-selling author, They Left Us Everything

"A harrowing tale of abuse, recovery and reconciliation. One courageous woman's memoir of overcoming violence and trauma that looks straight into the heart of darkness to find the light. I loved this book." — Maude Barlow, author and activist

"Gwen's story will shock and astound you — the utimate testament to resilience. Her power lies in telling her tale with humour while revealing, always without self-pity, how layers of intergenerational trauma form our childhoods. Immediately engaging, heartbreaking but hopeful, The View From Coffin Ridge is an absolute must-read memoir." — Cea Sunrise Person, best-selling author, North of Normal and Almost Normal

The View From Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed is published by The Ginger Press. For tickets and more information, visit CoffinRidge.ca

 

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