Karen Hofmann

Karen Hofmann's empathetic and cathartic novel, What is Going to Happen Next, pieces together the lives of five members of the Lund family following their enforced dispersal after the death of the father and the hospitalization of the mother in the remote West Coast community of Butterfly Lake. It explores their self-doubts and aspirations in the ways they cope with their separation and reunion through their work and personal relationships, and reveals the ways in which their past is filtered through memory and desire. It also skillfully exposes a Vancouver class system from the perspectives of diverse socio-economic conditions and lifestyles.

What Is Going to Happen Next

Having escaped the place in her youth, retired professor Sidonie von Täler returns to her ancestral Okanagan valley orchards still very much in the shadow of her deceased older sister Alice. As she sifts through the detritus of her family history, Sidonie is haunted by memories of trauma and triumph in equal measure, and must reconcile past and present while reconnecting with the people she left behind. Karen Hofmann’s debut novel blends a poetic sensibility with issues of land stewardship, social stratification and colonialism. Her eye for period detail and characterization is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin or Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel, while her lyrical realization of bygone B.C. pastoralia recalls the work of George Bowering.

After Alice

Helmut Traitler

Birgit Coleman

Food products have always been designed, but usually not consciously. Even when design has been part of the process, it has often been restricted to considerations of packaging, logos, fonts and colors. But now design is impacting more dramatically on the complex web that makes up our food supply, and beginning to make it better. Ways of thinking about design have broad applications and are becoming central to how companies compete. To succeed, food designers need to understand consumers and envision what they want, and to use technology and systems to show they can deliver what has been envisioned. They also need to understand organizations in order to make innovation happen in a corporation. The authors of this book argue that design has been grossly underestimated in the food industry. The role of design in relation to technology of every kind (materials, mechanics, ingredients, conversion, transformation, etc.) is described, discussed, challenged and put into proper perspective. The authors deftly analyze and synthesize complex concepts, inspiring new ideas and practices through real-world examples. The second part of the book emphasizes the role of innovation and how the elements described and discussed in the first parts (design, technology, business) must join forces in order to drive valuable innovation in complex organizations such as large (and not so large) food companies. Ultimately, this groundbreaking book champions the implementation of a design role in defining and executing business strategies and business processes. Not only are designers tremendously important to the present and future successes of food corporations, but they should play an active and decisive role at the executive board level of any food company that strives for greater success.

Karen Hofmann

Books

Your next favorite book is out there