How Big Social Issues Push the Imagination to Its Limits with Award-Winning Author, Zak Jones

What happens when fiction edges uncomfortably close to truth?

Join Muskoka Authors on Thursday, April 9 as the Muskoka Authors Association welcomes Zak Jones for a compelling conversation on how today’s most pressing American issues—opioid addiction, religious fundamentalism, poverty—stretch the imagination to its limits. Echoing Margaret Atwood’s haunting insight that nothing in The Handmaid’s Tale exists outside the reality of history, this discussion asks: if these stories mirror our world, what version of 21st-century “freedom” allows such desperation to endure?

The author’s novel, Fancy Gap, released in February of this year weaves these issues into a profound and captivating story. In the hills and isolated mountain enclaves of southern Appalachia, Nana Grace has left her own family behind to become the “Shepherd” of a disaffected flock of worshippers that she keeps in thrall through her charismatic preaching and the dispensing of stolen drugs. The story is an unflinching look at the desperation that throws kerosene on the flames of opioid use, poverty, illness, and apocalyptic Christianity. This new novel introduces Zak Jones as a compelling and original new voice in Canadian literature.

ZAK JONES is a writer, literary scholar and US Army Veteran. A dual Canadian-American citizen, he grew up between rural North Carolina and Toronto. His short story, So Much More to Say, won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s 2023 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and his story, Love Handles, won the 2023 Norma Epstein National Award. Zak holds an MA in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying veterans’ narratives in American Literature

LOCATION: Bracebridge United Church, 46 Dominion Street, Bracebridge
In the Seminar Room – use the entrance on the southside driveway, and proceed downstairs and to the right.

Doors open: 6:30 p.m.
Event starts: 7 p.m.
Members: Free
Guests: $20

REGISTER and send payment to info@muskokaauthors.ca