BWS 08.05.13: Elizabeth Ruth

Launching Matadora a mere two weeks ago, Elizabeth Ruth told the jam-packed Gladstone Hotel ballroom that like all good books about bullfighting, her third novel isn’t about bullfighting at all. “It’s about ambition and love,” she said of the story of Luna, a young servant woman in 1930s Spain who chases a dream of breaking the gender barrier and getting into the ring.

Matadora is a departure from Elizabeth’s previous books — both the Amazon.ca First Novel Award-, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize-, and Toronto Book Award-nominated Ten Good Seconds of Silence (2001) and Smoke (the 2007 Waterloo Region One Book, One Community selection), were set in Ontario — and the novel took six years to complete, not counting two years of research, trips to Spain and  Mexico, or all the Ernest Hemingway she re-read.

Hemingway? Now we have to ask her about the bullfighting. But as it turns out, Quill & Quire beat us to the punch.

The book’s off to hot start, with a rave review in Now from Susan G. Cole and an interview May 15 at Toronto Reference Library… but this time, BWS can say that we’ve got her first! And if you’re still not as excited as we are about the long-anticipated Matadora…? Just watch this book trailer.

You see? You’re excited.

And it isn’t about the bullfight.

Elizabeth Ruth visits the Brockton Writers Series May 8, 2013 – full of beans Coffee House & Roastery, 1348 Dundas St. W., Toronto (7pm, PWYC) – along with Andy Sinclair, Mahlikah Awe:ri, and Moez Surani.

Watch this space for more with each of our readers in the month leading up to the event!

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