Elyse Friedman's guest appearances

Elyse Friedman

The Performers Podcast

Writers Festival Radio

Jeff Goins

Ray Cronise

Julieanna Hever

Ken Davenport

Irene Sankoff

David Hein

Kat Edmonson

Steve Cohen

Dayna Manning

Ophira Eisenberg

Steve Ross

Brooke Johnson

John Miller

Michael Healey

Ilana Levine

OwlTail

Steven W. Beattie interviews Elyse Friedman, acclaimed author, screenwriter, poet and playwright. Her latest novel, The Opportunist is a sly, compulsively readable tale about greed, power and the world’s most devious family. When Alana Shropshire’s seventy-six-year-old father, Ed, starts dating Kelly, a saucy twenty-eight-year-old, a flurry of messages arrive from Alana’s brothers, urging her to help “protect Dad” from the young interloper. Alana knows that what Teddy and Martin really want to protect is their father’s fortune, and she tells them she couldn’t care less about the May–December romance. Long estranged from her privileged family, Alana has no stake in the game, and as a hardworking single mom, she has more important things to worry about. But when Ed and Kelly’s wedding is announced, Teddy and Martin kick into hyperdrive, and eventually persuade Alana to fly to their father’s 900-acre West Coast island retreat to perform one small task in their plan to lure the “gold digger” away from their father. Kelly, however, proves a lot wilier than expected, and Alana becomes entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of secrets and surprises. Will she be able to escape her brothers’ elaborate web of deceit? Just how far will her siblings go to retain control?The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives.SUBSCRIBE:https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&amp;id=d2443cdbd3DONATIONS:https://writersfestival.org/about/donations

Steven W. Beattie interviews Elyse Friedman, acclaimed author, screenwriter, poet and playwright. Her latest novel, The Opportunist is a sly, compulsively readable tale about greed, power and the world’s most devious family. When Alana Shropshire’s seventy-six-year-old father, Ed, starts dating Kelly, a saucy twenty-eight-year-old, a flurry of messages arrive from Alana’s brothers, urging her to help “protect Dad” from the young interloper. Alana knows that what Teddy and Martin really want to protect is their father’s fortune, and she tells them she couldn’t care less about the May–December romance. Long estranged from her privileged family, Alana has no stake in the game, and as a hardworking single mom, she has more important things to worry about. But when Ed and Kelly’s wedding is announced, Teddy and Martin kick into hyperdrive, and eventually persuade Alana to fly to their father’s 900-acre West Coast island retreat to perform one small task in their plan to lure the “gold digger” away from their father. Kelly, however, proves a lot wilier than expected, and Alana becomes entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of secrets and surprises. Will she be able to escape her brothers’ elaborate web of deceit? Just how far will her siblings go to retain control? The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children’s literacy initiatives. SUBSCRIBE: <a href="https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&amp;id=d2443cdbd3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://writersfestival.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c60faf808d54738144cc85de&amp;id=d2443cdbd3</a> DONATIONS: <a href="https://writersfestival.org/about/donations" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://writersfestival.org/about/donations</a>

S5 E10: The Opportunist with Elyse Friedman

Elyse's fiction has won a Gold National Magazine Award and has been short-listed for the Trillium Book Award and the Toronto Book Award. She's also written two feature films that were produced and has two more in development.  Among other things we discuss why Elyse dropped out of high school at a time in her life when she was, in her words, "a crazy, hormonal, freaked out teenager."

Author, Elyse Friedman