Book Launch — (IN)VISIBLE

OCT 20, 2022 to OCT 20, 2022

A novel by Ivan Baidak

TRANSLATED FROM UKRAINIAN BY
Hanna Leliv and Isaac Wheeler

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to support HELP HEROES OF UKRAINE

Diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome as a teenager, Adam, now a 26-year-old freelance designer, attends his first meeting at a social support group. Here he meets Anna, a charity worker with a facial hemangioma; Marta, a TV anchor with alopecia; and Eva, a make up artist with vitiligo. The following week he moves in with them.

Shaped after the writer’s own experience of living with Tourette’s syndrome, Adam tries to move from self-inflicted invisibility to being visible—in his family, career, and personal life.

The most recent bestseller of Ukrainian author Ivan Baidak and Best Book of 2020 according to PEN Ukraine, (In)visible is a book about what it means to be different. A book that encourages acceptance and tolerance. A book about fear and escape, about the necessity of being loved and accepted. It’s about the permanent struggle with your complexes and attempts to start loving yourself. It’s about hard stories. But also about big hearts.

Book Launch:
Thursday October 20, 2022
7PM at ACUA (NEW LOCATION)
10554 110 Street Edmonton

The author will be in attendance and the book will be available for purchase.

Author Bio
Іvan Baidak (born in 1990) is a daring Ukrainian fiction writer whose debut novel Personally Me Personally for You (2013) became a national bestseller and garnered excellent critical reviews. His two short story collections, Role Plays (2014) and The Shadows of Our Dates (2017), topped bookstore bestseller lists. His latest novel A Man With My Name (2019) was excellent proof of the writer’s maturity.

In 2020, he wrote a novel about inclusion, (In)visible, which was recognized as Best Book of 2020 according to PEN Ukraine. A play and several photo exhibitions were staged based on the book.

Originally from Ukraine, he’s lived in many places across the world, including Poland, Austria, Mexico, and the United States. His short stories have been translated into English, German, Serbian, Polish, Spanish, and Italian, and presented at European literary festivals. In 2019, the author’s debut Euro-tour took place, during which Ivan visited Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Prague, Berlin, Munich and Paris. He received a scholarship from Gaude Polonia 2020.

He left Lviv in early 2022 and was hosted by Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, and Slovenian Writers Association in Bled, Slovenia. He will be arriving in Canada in early September 2022.