Cover of "Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory " by Sarah Polley, 2023 Heritage Toronto Book Award nominee. Cover design by Kelly Hill.
Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory
Author: Sarah Polley
Publisher: Penguin Canada, Penguin Random House Canada
Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high-risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion caused by a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall of Trinity Bellwoods Community Centre, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms.
With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger. In this extraordinary book that takes us through the movements of Polley’s life in and around Toronto, evocative at every turn of the cultural heritage of the city, she explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing.
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Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory
About the Author:
Sarah Polley is the Academy Award-winning filmmaker of Women Talking. After making short films, Polley made her feature-length directorial debut with the drama film Away from Her in 2006. Polley received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, which she adapted from the Alice Munro story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Her other projects include the documentary film Stories We Tell (2012), which won the New York Film Critics Circle prize and the National Board of Review award for best documentary; the Netflix miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace (2017); and the romantic comedy Take This Waltz (2011).
