Celebrating the depth and diversity of BC publishing
On Tuesday, August 15th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Invisible Publishing for Francine Cunningham with Guests: Jónína Kirton, Nadine Bachan & Jennifer B.S. Williams.
“The stories in God Isn’t Here Today reveal Francine Cunningham as a gimlet eye observer of humanity, with boundless empathy and a searing sense of humour.” — Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the Book:
God Isn’t Here Today ricochets between form and genre, taking readers on a dark, irreverent, yet poignant journey led by a unique and powerful new voice.
Driven by desperation into moments of transformation, Cunningham’s characters are presented with moments of choice—some for the better and some for the worse. A young man goes to God’s office downtown for advice; a woman discovers she is the last human on Earth; an ice cream vendor is driven insane by his truck’s song; an ageing stripper uses undergarments to enact her escape plan; an incubus tires of his professional grind; and a young woman inherits a power that has survived genocide, but comes with a burden of its own.
Even as they flirt with the fantastic, Cunningham’s stories unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human nature—and that redemption can arise where we least expect it.
About the Authors
Francine Cunningham is an award-winning writer, artist, and educator who spends her summer days writing on the Prairies and her winter months teaching in the north. Francine is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta but grew up in Calgary, Edmonton, and 100 Mile House, BC. Francine is also Metis and has settler family roots stretching from as far away as Ireland and Belgium. She currently resides in Alberta and previously spent over a decade calling Vancouver her home.
Her debut book of poems On/Me (Caitlin Press) was nominated for The BC and Yukon Book Prize, The Indigenous Voices Award, and The Vancouver Book Award. Her debut book of short stories God Isn’t Here Today (Invisible Publishing) was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Francine also writes for television with credits including the teen reality show THAT’S AWSM! among others and was a recipient of a Telus StoryHive grant. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have also appeared in The Best Canadian Short Stories, The Best Canadian Non-Fiction, in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Prose shortlist, and on the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist, among others.
You can find out more about her at www.francinecunningham.ca.
Jónína Kirton, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet and citizen of the Métis Nation of BC currently lives in New Westminster BC, the unceded territory of the Halkomelem speaking peoples. She was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Treaty 1, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book, Standing in a River of Time, merges poetry and lyrical memoir to take us on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on her Métis family.
Nadine Bachan was born in Trinidad and raised in the suburbs of Toronto. Her essays about culture, family, and identity have appeared in print and digital publications across North America including Maisonneuve, Hazlitt, Canthius, The New Quarterly, and Catapult. She has been anthologized in The Best Canadian Essays series and The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Her debut in true-crime writing was published in the “Partners in Crime” edition of The Best New True Crime Stories series. When not at her desk, Nadine can usually be found crocheting or knitting.
Nadine lives with her partner on the west coast near Jericho Beach. She is currently developing a memoir and a collection of linked short stories. You can learn more at www.linktr.ee/nadinebachan.
Jennifer B.S. Williams (Yes, those are her middle initials) is a Gitksan/Sekani author and mother currently living in Chilliwack, BC. Jennifer’s writing takes the form of creative nonfiction, flash fiction, scriptwriting and poetry. Her writing evokes the culture she represents, giving a new voice to the ancestors she carries with her. With an Associates Degree in Aboriginal Studies from Langara College and a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Jennifer’s writing is immersed in her life experiences as an Indigenous woman. Each piece she creates represents an intentional move forward on her journey of cultural reclamation. In 2021, Jennifer produced a manuscript of poetry, including 25 distinct pieces, titled “Disconnected Existence”. She is currently working on extending this collection of poetry under the mentorship of the N’we Jinan ArtWorks Emerging Artist program.