NEWS RELEASE
NIMBUS PUBLISHING LTD.
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Actor, filmmaker and author Shelley Thompson will have a mini-tour in February around Ontario to promote her novel Roar. Inspired by the screenplay for her film, Dawn, Her Dad and the Tractor, Roar follows the story of Dawn, once Donnie, as she returns to her family’s farm after the death of her mother. It will be the first time she meets them as herself.
The Literary Review of Canada called the book “an incisive take on the discrimination that routinely seeps through Canada’s veneer of inclusivity.” 49thshelf.com selected Roar as a 2023 Best Book of the Year, and CBC Nova Scotia called the book a valuable resource for parents supporting trans children. Shelley is the mother of an adult trans child and is an ardent trans activist.
Shelley will have an event at The Bookshelf in Guelph on Tuesday, Jan. 30 where she’ll be joined by trans singer-songwriter Transtar (aka Aimee Copping):
Aimee Copping is a dual OGS laureate and a performer recording as Transstar on the independent Park Music. She's a music educator for at-risk children and leads SongLine, a songwriting mentorship program for trans youth. She's collaborated with Girls’ Rock Camp Guelph, Pros and Cons and Silence Sounds while holding board and committee seats with ARCH Guelph and the Upper Grand District School Board. In 2021, Aimee Copping wrote and produced Synths Always, a four-part audio documentary on the history of electronic music - one of her passions.
ROAR:
The MacInnes family is grieving. The loss of Miranda has devastated her husband, John Andrew, her eldest daughter, Tammy, and her youngest child, Dawn. Not Donnie anymore but Dawn, like sunrise, who transitioned while her mother received cancer treatment—without the rest of the family knowing. Now, when Dawn leaves Halifax for rural Nova Scotia to attend her mother’s funeral, she knows she'll be meeting her sister and father for the first time as herself.
With Dawn’s revelation, John Andrew and Tammy find themselves grieving for the son and brother they once knew, while Tammy’s fiancée, Byron, becomes an unexpected ally. Between the complicated reaction from her family, unwanted attention from local bigots, and whispers from curious neighbours, Dawn wonders if she can ever really come home.
A work of fierce allyship, enduring love, and of gentle hope, Roar follows a family through grief and estrangement as they become catalysts for change in their rural community. Told from multiple points of view, with confidence and tenderness, actor and screenwriter Shelley Thompson’s debut novel is profoundly authentic, drawing on her own experience as the mother of a trans child and a fierce activist for the trans community.
Shelley Thompson is an actor, screenwriter, and activist based in Wolfville, in Mi’kma’ki (NS). She trained at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the Canadian Film Centre, Women in the Directors’ Chair, the New York Writers' Lab, and the Whistler Producer’s Lab. As an actor she has received and been nominated for Gemini and ACTRA awards for her work in film and television, including The Trailer Park Boys and feature films Splinters, and The Child Remains, among others. Her short films have screened internationally and the most recent, Duck Duck Goose, won Best Atlantic Short at FIN Halifax, was selected by Telefilm Canada's Not Short on Talent at Clermont-Ferrand, and was a finalist in CBC's Short Film Faceoff. Her first feature film, Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor, premiered at INSIDE OUT International Film Festival in Toronto in May 2021, then at Halifax’s FIN International Film Festival in September 2021. It has since screened in Whistler, BC, Amsterdam's Roze Filmdagen, the BFI Flare Film Festival in London, UK, as well as across the US and Germany. Among many prizes and awards, the film recently won the 2022 Nova Scotia MasterWorks Award. Thompson is working on a full slate of projects for TV and cinema under the banner of her emerging production company, Rusty Tractor Productions Inc. A committed LGBTQ+2SP ally, Thompson is the proud parent to singer/songwriter T. Thomason. Roar is her first novel.
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