Susan Hannaford

We are so excited to welcome back Susan Doherty Hannaford for the launch of her third book, Monday Rent Boy.  Susan will be here at the Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library, 18 Maine Street, Kennebunkport on Wednesday, June 26 at 6:00 pm.  This event is free and open to the public. A reception with light refreshments will follow.

Susan has a Bachelor of Science from Concordia University and studied journalism at Ryerson University where she was recommended for a job at Macleans Magazine. After Macleans, she worked in Paris, France for a digital publishing company, Atex France, freelancing for The International Herald Tribune, La Tribune de Genève, La Suisse, and the Independent in London UK.  Back in Canada, she started her own company, On Location Productions, and for 18 years worked in advertising.  During that time, she studied creative writing at the University of Toronto, and Concordia University.  Susan has numerous volunteer affiliations: the YMCA and the Douglas Institute and was a long-serving board member of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. She was a board member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) in Montreal, and Nazareth Community, serving men and women with addictions and mental illness. As a committed volunteer, she works with patients suffering from psychosis through Montreal’s Douglas Institute and has done significant research in the area of bipolar illness and paranoid schizophrenia.  In Toronto, she created an annual event for the Royal Conservatory of Music, in a sustained effort to raise their endowment to allow all Canadian would-be professional musicians to study on full bursary.

Premise of Monday Rent Boy:

At eight years of age, Arthur Barnes and Ernie Castlefrank find themselves on the same altar boy at St. Nick’s, a situation that readies an unlikely friendship. Father Zipernowski— a pastor referred to as The Zipper, has given both boys a sterling crucifix that marks them as children conditioned to provide sexual favors for clergy members in the counties of Somerset and Avon.  As Ernie and Arthur slip into lives of petty degeneracy; dope-smoking thieves who steal from the collection plate, local shops, parked cars, and department stores in nearby Bristol, they laugh off their inner humiliation without ever speaking publicly, or privately about what has been happening in the vestry. Arthur’s book-thieving leads to an unlikely partnership with Marina Phillips, the owner of the town bookshop. He has the chance to reinvent himself as a young book critic with eyes to becoming an English major, a professor, and a scholar. Ernie’s leg-up comes in the form of a pawnshop owner, a man with a desire to profit from the exploitation of children in The Pint Room, a website on the Internet.

For more information, please call 967-2778 or visit our website:  www.graveslibrary.org