The Canadian author of an award-winning non-fiction book examining one of the world’s most famous painters and his beloved masterpiece will be at Vancouver Island University Tuesday (April 8) to take part in an interview on the Malaspina Theatre stage.
Ross King, who won the 2012 Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction for Leonardo and The Last Supper, will be interviewed by John Black, dean of the faculty of social sciences in a free public event beginning at 7 p.m.
King is the bestselling author of five books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. He has also published two historical novels, Domino and Ex-Libris, and edited a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's fables, jokes and riddles. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his books have been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Charles Taylor Prize, and the National Award for Arts Writing.
In 2006 he received his first Governor General’s Award for The Judgment of Paris. He won the Book Sense Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the United States for Brunelleschi's Dome, a book that was also on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Born and raised in Canada, King has lived in England since moving to London for post-doctoral studies in 1992. He lectures frequently in both Europe and North America, and has given guided tours of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. He lives near Oxford with his wife Melanie King, also a writer and historian.
Courtesy parking in VIU’s parking lot E has been arranged for attendees, beginning at 6:15 p.m.