"Laughing in Church is a Difficult Virtue” - Dr. Randy Boyagoda to Deliver Bishop Dollard Lecture

4:00 PM
Ted Daigle Auditorium
Edmund Casey Hall

Writer, critic and scholar Dr. Randy Boyagoda will deliver this year’s Bishop Dollard Lecture on Thursday, November 21 in the Ted Daigle Auditorium at 4 PM.

In his talk, "Laughing in Church is a Difficult Virtue,” novelist and professor Randy Boyagoda considers the stakes of writing comedy in times of tragedy. He does so by way of reflecting on the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka alongside the premise of his new novel, Original Prin, which is about a Sri Lankan Catholic academic and begins “Eight months before he became a suicide bomber, Prin went to the zoo with his family.”

About the speaker:
Novelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as Principal of St. Michael’s College and holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. His most recent novel, Original Prin, was named a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2018 and a New York Times Editor’s Choice Selection (2019). His work has been nominated for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize, IMPAC Dublin Prize, and appeared in publications including the New York Times and Guardian. A regular contributor to CBC Radio, Boyagoda lives in Toronto with his wife and four children.