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Emelia Symington Fedy will read from her memoir, Skid Dogs, talk about themes in her book, and participate in a Q&A moderated by former Owen Sound Poet Laureate, Lauren Best.
Date and time: Friday, June 21, at 7:00 p.m. at the Owen Sound library auditorium
On Halloween night in 2011, a girl is killed on Armstrong’s railroad tracks and Emelia returns home to comfort her terrified mother as her community reels in chaos. Back on the tracks, she begins to question her own girlhood, twenty years previous.
This unflinching reckoning of teenage rape culture tells the dark and hilarious true story of a thirteen-year-old and her girl gang before they have to turn against each other in order to survive. Set in the life-loving and rowdy early 1990s, Emelia braids the early teenage years of her girl gang throughout the real-time events of 2011 when she returns home as an adult to witness the terror her hometown is going through while trying (and failing) to care for her dying mother.
Full of the wry humor they learned on the tracks, Skid Dogs advances a necessary cultural reckoning about pleasure, promiscuity, and consent, poking back at what Emelia previously didn’t dare admit, that assault was common and put up with. Now, back at the scene of the crime, Emelia is forced to recognize the constant and often painful mishandling of her own teenage body. Maybe this is why the old gang hasn’t talked in twenty years? And why she still looks over her shoulder at night? Emelia holds her hometown close and accountable, revealing the personal ways misogyny shows up daily, making the harm done blatant, grotesque, and sometimes- by necessity- comically absurd.
Skid Dogs tracks the nuanced and granular coercion that permeates girlhood. A window into how girls behave before the male gaze lands, this memoir captures girls at their most unruly and free.
Date & Time
Fri., Jun. 21, 2024 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Venue Details
Owen Sound & North Grey Union Public Library
824 1st Avenue WestOwen Sound, Ontario N4K 4K4
