The Afternoon Book Chats are the perfect excuse for a coffee break! The Atrium at McNally Robinson Booksellers takes on a café ambiance for this series of relaxed conversations about writing moderated by THIN AIR’s own Charlene Diehl. The messy challenges of family relationships prove to be irresistible for poet Sharon McCartney and novelist Craig Francis Power, and they’ll discuss that draw over the course of this afternoon.

Sharon McCartney has an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a law degree from the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She has published several poetry collections, including Under the Abdominal Wall, which was selected for the BC 2000 Book Awards Program, and The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder, which won the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Her new collection is For & Against. A former resident of Victoria, she now works as a legal editor in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and is a member of the editorial staff of The Fiddlehead.

Craig Francis Power is one of the new storytelling voices out of Newfoundland.. His debut novel, Blood Relatives, has just been released by Pedlar Press. While still in manuscript, it won two coveted Newfoundland writing awards: The Percy Janes First Novel Award, and the Fresh Fish Award. As the Fresh Fish jury citation puts it: "Darkly comic in intent, and times hilarious, at other times unnerving, Blood Relatives creates an utterly believable fictional world that turns the conventions of the coming-of-age novel inside out." Power lives in St. John’s.