Font of artistic energy here to share moments for her children’s novel
Adrienne Kress reads from her novel ALex and the Ironic Gentleman Nov. 18 in Duncan.
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Author and actress Adrienne Kress visits the Cowichan Library for today’s Book Week reading from her hit novel Alex and the Ironic Gentleman.
The heroine is Alex Morningside, a lovable tomboy with a knack for trouble and a quest for adventure while attending prestigious Wigpowder-Steele Academy.
But her teachers are all “old and smelly,” the 10-year-old claims, “and don’t seem to know about anything that has happened in the world in the past 30 years, and her peers…well they are quite simply ridiculous.”
Then new teacher Mr. Underwood makes lessons fun and teaches Alex how to fence.
But Underwood has a mysterious family secret—the swashbuckling and buried treasure kind—and not everyone is glad he has come to Wigpowder-Steele. When the infamous pirates of the ship Ironic Gentleman kidnap Underwood, Alex sets off to rescue him, encountering strange and magical characters, including the sometimes-heroic Captain Magnanimous.
“I found it quirky, hilarious and genuinely exhilarating,” said Eoin Colfer, author of the bestselling Artemis Fowl series.
Torontonian Kress majored in drama at the age 11 at the Claude Watson School for the Arts, and continued this path through post-secondary school, graduating summa cum laude from the University of Toronto with an honours BA in theatre. She then studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.
Back in Canada, she joined the Tempest Theatre Group, a Shakespearean theatre company, and produced and directed her own work.
Her parallel stage was a passion for writing.
In high school, Kress won the Gordon C. Johnson award.
In university she studied with top Canadian playwright Djanet Sears and the play she wrote, A Weekend in the Country, was performed at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and at Toronto’s Summerworks Theatre Festival in 2007.
Inspired by a trip to the town of Bath, Kress wrote Alex and the Ironic Gentleman.
Publishers worldwide snapped it up and have also picked up its sequel, Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate.
Your ticket:
What: Adrienne Kress reads from Alex and the Ironic Gentleman
When: Nov. 18, 1 p.m.
Where: Cowichan Library, Island Savings Centre.
Tickets: Free. Call 250-746-7661
