Read Local BC

An Evening with Holly Howe, author of Mouthwatering Sauerkraut
2025-04-17 18:00 - 20:30 (America/Vancouver) | Vinca’s Kitchen Shop, 5042 48 Ave, Delta, British Columbia, V4K1V8, Canada
Join us at Vinca’s Kitchen for a special evening with Chef Holly Howe to celebrate the release of her new cookbook Mouthwatering Sauerkraut: Fermentation Made Easy!
Tickets are $40.00 plus tax and come with a copy of the new cookbook. There are only 35 tickets available.
Doors open at 6:00 pm and the event will start at 6:30 pm. Chef Holly will be demonstrating a couple of recipes, providing samples, and answering all your questions!
PLEASE NOTE – to purchase a ticket for this event online you MUST have your shopping location set as the Ladner store.
Your receipt is your ticket. Your book will be available for pick up at the event. Thank you!

Rodney DeCroo Book Launch + Concert
2025-04-23 19:00 - 21:00 | VIFF Centre, 1164 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 3N3, Canada
Come celebrate the launch of Night Moves, Rodney’s first collection of street photography. Happening at VIFF Centre on Wednesday April 23, count on a lively evening of poetry, music, film, and thought-provoking discussion.
7:00 pm — Reception
7:30 pm — Introduction and slide show featuring work from Night Moves
7:45 pm — Conversation with The Georgia Straight’s Mike Usinger on the art and ethics of street photography, followed by Q&A and intermission
8:30 pm — Poetry, Music and Short Films with Rodney and his band, The Wise Blood

Tawahum Bige: Book Launch & Conversation at Enabling Arts
2025-04-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Enabling Arts, 104-343 Railway Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6A 1A4, Canada
Tawahum Bige will launch a new poetry collection, Stages of Tanning Words and Remembering Spells, at Enabling Arts on Granville Island on April 26, 7pm.
In their second poetry collection, Tawahum Bige explores belonging and voice of a Two-Spirit Dene youth. These poems are a stark plunge—an answer to how voice emerges for a young Two Spirit growing up in so-called “Surrey, BC,” far from his Łutselk’e Dene territories.

Anna Veprinska and Joseph Kidney: Dual Poetry Launch
2025-05-05 19:00 - 20:30 | B.C.
A dual launch of poetry books Devotional Forensics and Bonememory at
Cross and Crow Books. Featuring the wonderful Dominique Bernier-Cormier.
2836 Commercial Drive, Vancouver B.C.

Iona Winshaw and Gregor Craigie
2025-05-08 06:30 - 20:30 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Join Munro’s Books as Iona Whishaw discusses the latest installment of her popular Lane Winslow mystery series with CBC host and author Gregor Craigie.
Publishers Weekly calls The Cost of a Hostage “highly entertaining,” as Lane ventures through Mexico while the team back in Nelson works on a kidnapping case that’s as open-and-shut as it is complicated.

Six Little Sticks Book Launch
2025-05-10 12:30 - 15:30 | B.C.
Book launch for Tiffany Stone’s new book Six Little Sticks!
Book signings, snacks, and crafts with author Tiffany Stone to celebrate the release of her new kids picture book!
This event will be held at the Christianne’s Lyceum of Literature and Art on May 10th from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
www.christianneslyceum.com
4433 West 10th Avenue, Vancouver, V6R 2H8

Talonbooks Spring 2025 Launch
2025-05-23 19:00 - 21:00 | B.C.
Celebrate the new spring releases from Talonbooks! Please join us at the Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall on Friday, May 23, to welcome the following books to the world:
allostatic load by Junie Désil
Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson
Future Works by Jeff Derksen
Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali
Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon, translated by Jessica Moore!
The launch will be hosted by andrea bennett, author of the berry takes the shape of the bloom.

Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall
1955 McLean Drive
Vancouver, BC
May 23, 2025
Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; readings begin at 7:30 p.m.

Bones of a Giant with Brian Thomas Isaac
2025-06-02 19:00 - 20:30 | Native Education College, 285 East 5th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5T 1H2, Canada
Join Massy Books, Penguin Random House, and Brian Thomas Isaac for the launch of “Bones of a Giant” at 7 pm on Monday, June 2nd!
Books will be for sale at the event, including “All the Quiet Places.”
Venue:
The event will be hosted at the Massy Books, at 229 East Georgia Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free or by donation and required for entry.
The bookstore is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are recommended and will be provided at the venue. We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the Book:
Summer, 1968. For the first time since his big brother, Eddie, disappeared two years earlier—either a runaway or dead by his own hand—sixteen-year-old Lewis Toma has shaken off some of his grief. His mother, Grace, and her friend Isabel have gone south to the United States to pack fruit to earn the cash Grace needs to put a bathroom and running water into the three-room shack they share on the reserve, leaving Lewis to spend the summer with his cousins, his Uncle Ned and his Aunt Jean in the new house they’ve built on their farm along the Salmon River. Their warm family life is almost enough to counter the pressures he feels as a boy trying to become a man in a place where responsible adult men like his uncle are largely absent, broken by residential school and racism. Everywhere he looks, women are left to carry the load, sometimes with kindness, but often with the bitterness, anger and ferocity of his own mother, who kicked Lewis’s lowlife father, Jimmy, to the curb long ago.
Lewis has vowed never to be like his father—but an encounter with a predatory older woman tests him and he suffers the consequences. Worse, his dad is back in town and scheming on how to use the Indian Act to steal the land Lewis and his mom have been living on. And then, at summer’s end, more shocking revelations shake the family, unleashing a deadly force of anger and frustration.
With so many traps laid around him, how will Lewis find a path to a different future?
About the Author:
Brian Thomas Isaac was born in 1950 on the Okanagan Indian Reserve, near Vernon, British Columbia. After completing grade eight, he found work in the Alberta oil fields and in construction, eventually retiring as a bricklayer. He came to writing late in life. In 2022, his bestselling debut, All the Quiet Places, won an Indigenous Voices Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and CBC’s Canada Reads. He lives with his wife in West Kelowna, BC.

Launch Party: Celebrate 100 Issues of subTerrain
2025-06-08 17:00 - 19:00 | B.C.
Join subTerrain, one of Vancouver’s longest standing literary magazines, in celebrating 100 issues of literary publishing from the margins.

Sunday, June 8th
Hero’s Welcome
3917 Main St. (at 23rd Ave.)
Door open at 5:00 pm — Readings at 6:00

Read Local BC eBookshelf Launch
2025-06-19 11:00 - 12:00 | Burnaby Public Library, McGill Branch, 4595 Albert Street, Burnaby, BC, V5C 2G6, Canada
Books BC and the BC Libraries Cooperative will host a reading event to mark the launch of Read Local BC eBookshelf. The event with feature readings BC authors Candie Tanaka and Wayde Compton at Burnaby Public Library, McGill Branch on Thursday, June 19, from 11 am to noon (door open 10:30 am).
The event is open to the public and members of the media are invited to attend. You can register here.

Book Launch: Celebrating Potlatches
2025-06-21 13:30 - 15:30 | Royal BC Museum, 675 Belleville Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 9W2, Canada
This June 21st, join Samantha Beynon and Strong Nations Publishing at the Royal BC Museum for the official launch of Celebrating Potlatches! This beautiful picture book, illustrated by Carla Joseph, recounts the 1885 Potlatch ban and the resilience of the communities who fought to keep their traditions alive. Pick up your copies at the launch, or pre-order now at www.strongnations.com
Stop by for short presentations from Samantha Beynon and Strong Nations Publishing, a reading of the book, book signings, and light refreshments. Doors will open at 1:00 pm, and the program will begin at 1:30 pm.

Book Launch of The Deepest Fake by Daniel Kalla
2025-07-30 18:30 - 21:00 | Book Warehouse – Main Street, 4118 Main Street, Vancouver, BC, V5V 3P7, Canada
Join us for the launch of local thriller author Daniel Kalla’s new novel The Deepest Fake.
Doors at 6:30; This is an informal event with no reading portion; Free to attend and all are welcome.
Liam Hirsch has it all—a loving family, a thriving career as CEO of an AI company, financial security, and a bright future. But when he’s diagnosed with a terminal illness, just weeks after discovering his wife’s infidelity, his perfect life unravels. As he grapples with his fate, he prepares to face his final days on his own terms.
However, unexplained events inside his company make him question everything—including his diagnosis. In a world of deepfake videos, synthetic voices, and digital deception, couldn’t these technologies be weaponized against him? What if nothing is as it seems?
With time running out, Liam turns to Andrea DeWalt, a private investigator contending with her own feelings of betrayal, to help him uncover a conspiracy that threatens his life, his family, and their future. In a world where nothing is as it seems and every digital footprint can be manipulated, who can Liam trust?

Book Launch of The Bone Raiders by Jackson Ford
2025-08-13 18:30 - 21:00 | Book Warehouse – Main Street, 4118 Main Street, Vancouver, BC, V5V 3P7, Canada
Join us for the launch of Vancouver author Jackson Ford’s new novel The Bone Raiders, the first in the Rakada series.
The start of a no‑holds‑barred, action‑packed fantasy series from the always irreverent Jackson Ford where a group of charmingly-named Bone Raiders harness the power of gigantic, fire-breathing lizards to defend their homeland from an invading enemy.
Jackson will be in conversation with Kristy Gardner, author of The Broken Stars series.
Doors at 6:30 pm, event starts at 7:00 pm; free to attend and all are welcome.

Poetry Bus! Celebrating the 29th Year of Poetry in Transit
2025-09-20 14:00 - 15:30 | UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson St, Vancouver, BC, V6E 1A7, Canada
In partnership with TransLink and BC Transit, Read Local BC presents the launch of this year’s Poetry In Transit campaign at Word Vancouver. Now celebrating its 29th year, this beloved community-engagement project displays the work of ten BC poets on public transit vehicles throughout the province. Join us to hear a selection of the featured 2025-26 poets read from their work, followed by a short discussion and Q&A in which you can engage with the poets over your love of the written verse!
READERS
HOST Elee Kraljii Gardiner is an author, editor, and creative mentor whose award-winning books of poetry include Trauma Head and serpentine loop, and the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and three chapbooks: Residence, WATCHER with Gary Barwin, and Trauma Head: the medical file. A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, and visual artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time. Originally from Boston, she lives in Canada where she directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors. eleekg.com

Susan Alexander’s poems have appeared in Canadian and international anthologies and literary magazines, such as The Southern Review, Pangyrus, Arc and Grain. Her most recent publication is Berberitzen with Raven Chapbooks (2024). She is the author of two full collections, Nothing You Can Carry (2020) and The Dance Floor Tilts (2017) with Thistledown Press. Her poetry has won multiple awards, including the 2022 Vancouver’s City Poem Prize. She has hosted poetry readings and panels for the Federation of BC Writers and Victoria’s Festival of Writers. Susan lives on Nexwlélexm/Bowen Island, the traditional and unceded territory of the Squamish people.

Jen Currin is the author of seven books, including Hider/Seeker: Stories, which was a finalist for a ReLit Award and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book, and The Inquisition Yours, which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award and was a Lambda finalist. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, on the traditional territories of the Multnomah, Chinook, Clackamas, and other tribes, Currin lives in New Westminster, BC, on unceded Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, and Musqueam territories and teaches creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Junie Désil, born to Haitian immigrant parents in Montréal and raised in Winnipeg, has devoted over two decades to empowering communities made marginalized. An accomplished poet, her debut collection, eat salt | gaze at the ocean (2020), was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and explores themes of Black sovereignty and the Haitian diaspora. Currently residing on the Traditional Territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin, and Klahoose, Junie mentors emerging writers at Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. Beyond her professional life, Junie enjoys writing, coaching, consulting, and raising goats.

Joseph Kidney’s poems have been published in Best Canadian Poetry 2024, Vallum, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, The Ex-Puritan, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (in Arabic translation), and more. He has won the Short Grain Contest, the Young Buck Poetry Prize, and Arc’s Poem of the Year. Devotional Forensics is his first full-length collection.

Natalie Lim is a Chinese-Canadian poet living on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples (Vancouver, BC). She is the winner of the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize and Room magazine’s 2020 Emerging Writer Award, with work published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and elsewhere. She is the author of a chapbook, arrhythmia (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022).

Lauren Peat is a poet, translator, and teacher based in Vancouver, BC. Her poems, essays, and translations from French have appeared in a wide variety of journals and magazines, and her many collaborations with composers are featured in the repertoire of acclaimed vocal ensembles across North America. Her debut poetry chapbook, Future Tense, was published by Baseline Press in 2024.

Tom Wayman’s prolific literary career includes writing more than twenty poetry collections, three collections of critical and cultural essays, three books of short fiction and a novel, as well as editing six poetry anthologies. He received British Columbia’s 2022 George Woodcock Award for Lifetime Achievement in the literary arts. In 2015, he was named a Vancouver Literary Landmark, with a plaque on the city’s Commercial Drive commemorating his championing of people writing for themselves about their daily employment. He won the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards prize for fiction in 2016 (for the short story collection, The Shadows We Mistake for Love) and for poetry in 2023 (for Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time). His memoir, The Road to Appledore (or How I Went Back to The Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place), was published in 2024. Wayman lives in Winlaw, BC, and his website is www.tomwayman.com.

Calvin Wharton has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the U.S., Wales, Sweden, and Denmark. He is a former chair of Creative Writing at Douglas College and writer in residence at the University of Wales. His books include a collection of short fiction, Three Songs by Hank Williams, and poetry collections The Song Collides, The Invention of Birds, and This Here Paradise.

An Evening with Holly Howe, author of Mouthwatering Sauerkraut
2025-09-23 18:00 - 20:30 | Vinca’s Kitchen Shop, 5042 48 Ave, Delta, British Columbia, V4K1V8, Canada
Join us at Vinca’s Kitchen for a special evening with Chef Holly Howe to celebrate the release of her new cookbook Mouthwatering Sauerkraut: Fermentation Made Easy!
Tickets are $40.00 plus tax and come with a copy of the new cookbook. There are only 35 tickets available.
Doors open at 6:00 pm and the event will start at 6:30 pm. Chef Holly will be demonstrating a couple of recipes, providing samples, and answering all your questions!
PLEASE NOTE – to purchase a ticket for this event online you MUST have your shopping location set as the Ladner store OR the Langley Warehouse location.

Comic Pre-Launch Party: Passing in the Night
2026-02-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Cross & Crows Books, 2836 Commercial Dr,, Vancouver, BC, V5N 4C6, Canada
Meet the author of Passing in the Night by Meghan Kemp-Gee, an upcoming graphic novel published by Vancouver-based publisher Shrimp Cult Press. Passing in the Night is the story of two star-crossed lovers, Ruth and Gloria. Ruth is a busy medical resident with a sleep disorder… and Gloria transforms into a giant flying lizard every night. While they struggle to make things work at home, Ruth gets kidnapped by fairies and anti-magic riots spread throughout the city. Can they make things work, or are they just two ships passing in the night?
Passing in the Night was illustrated by the incredibly talented, GLAAD and RINGO-award-winning Lane Lloyd, and lettered by Megan Praz, the illustrator of One More Year an Contested Strip.
The event will include a talk by author Meghan Kemp-Gee, snacks, non-alcoholic drinks, and an exclusive comic of the opening pages of the book for anyone who backs the Kickstarter. We are generously hosted by Cross & Crows Books, a bookstore in East Vancouver that celebrates queer stories.

Getting Juicy with Awfully Hilarious: Pillow Talk Book Launch
2026-02-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Whistler Public Library, 4329 Main Street, Whistler, BC, V0N 1B4, Canada
Join us at Whistler Public Library as we celebrate the launch of the latest and greatest from the Awfully Hilarious Project.
First, we cringed and laughed at tales of first dates. Then, we nodded in agreement and horror as we read Period Pieces. Now, join us for the launch of the third book in the series, Pillow Talk. This latest addition to the Awfully Hilarious series takes us into the bedrooms (and back-seats and bathrooms) of its writers with true tales of intimacy, pleasure, and desire.
This book launch will feature readings from several Pillow Talk contributors including Awfully Hilarious mastermind Heather Hendrie, followed by a conversation moderated by Library Program Coordinator Jeanette Bruce and a Q&A with the audience.

Book Launch: Pillow Talk
2026-02-17 18:30 - 20:30 | Squamish Public Library, 37907 2 Ave, Squamish, BC, V8B 0A7, Canada
Join us at the Squamish Public Library as we welcome back Heather Hendrie, the Imagination Agent behind the Awfully Hilarious trilogy. We cringed and laughed at tales of first dates. We nodded in agreement and horror as we read Period Pieces. Now join us for the launch of the third book in the series, Pillow Talk.

Introducing Cee Peal: 2026 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence
2026-03-31 18:00 - 19:30 | VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY – CENTRAL LIBRARY
Vancouver Public Library is honoured to introduce Cee Peal as the 2026 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence.
Cee Peal is a theatre artist from the Nisga’a First Nation of Northern B.C. now working in Vancouver on the traditional, unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples. He brings to the library his experience in storytelling, theatre, and image making, drawing from his experience working as an actor, director, writer, dancer, and producer on various productions. With a passion for Indigenous studies and cultural evolution, Cee is also the Indigenous outreach coordinator at The Cultch and the artistic associate at The Carmen Arts Group.
To find out more about Cee’s residency and keep up with his upcoming events visit: vpl.ca/storyteller
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Join us for an evening of storytelling and theatre magic with special guests.

Book Launch - Exhumations: Inside the Body of a Petrostate by Joanne Leow
2026-04-09 18:30 - 20:30 | Enabling Arts, 104-343 Railway Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6A 1A4, Canada
Join Simon Fraser University English Professor Joanne Leow at Enabling Arts on April 9th (6:30 PM) for the launch of her new book, “Exhumations: Inside the Body of a Petrostate”.
About the book:
“What unknowable chemical? How slow was this damage, this violence? … How might any of us stay uncontaminated by all that was built around us?”
“Exhumations: In the Body of a Petrostate” oscillates between an unflinching critique of the author’s birth island, Singapore, and a memoir of grief and illness. Seeing our porous bodies as part of a contaminated and compromised system based on extraction, violence, and political repression, the book asks what must be made visible in our current moment. Drawing on her experience as a journalist for state-controlled media, and her current work as a scholar, Leow explores histories of activism, censorship, weapons manufacturing, terraforming, and petroleum refining. In doing so, she traces the networks of power that link Singapore with Canada, Palestine, Israel, England and beyond. Drawing on art, photography, film, and literature, she considers how they exhume truths that cannot otherwise be told.
This launch is supported by Simon Fraser University’s Department of English and the David See-chai Lam Centre, and Alchemy/Knopf.
Professor Leow will be joined by UBC Professors Phanuel Antwi and John Paul (JP) Catungal. (Photo Credits: for Joanne Leow: sweetmoon photography; for Phanuel Antwi: Rachel Topham Photography)
Speaker Bios:
Joanne Leow grew up in Singapore and now lives on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair of Transnational and Decolonial Digital Humanities at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of the academic monograph, “Counter-Cartographies: Reading Singapore Otherwise” (Liverpool University Press, 2024) and the poetry collection, “Seas Move Away” (Turnstone Press, 2022). Her creative work and research lie at the intersections of the environmental humanities, transnational and diasporic cultural production, global Asia studies, autotheory, and decoloniality.
JP Catungal (he/him) is Assistant Professor in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, and Co-Director of the Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement at the University of British Columbia. A queer, first generation, Filipinx Canadian scholar, JP’s research, teaching and public facing works are in conversation with critical human geography and feminist and queer of colour theories and methods. He is particularly interested in how migrant, racialized and LGBTQ+ communities address their experiences of marginalization in the fields of sexual health, education and social services. He has served as co-edit of the book, “Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility”, as well as special journal issues for “BC Studies”; “ACME: International Journal of Critical Geographies”; “TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies”; and “Alon: Journal for Filipino American and Diasporic Studies”. He received the Killam Teaching Prize at UBC.
Phanuel Antwi is an artist, an organizer, a curator, and an associate professor of English concerned with race, poetics, movements, intimacy, and struggle. He works with text, dance, film, and photography to intervene in artistic, academic, and public spaces. Dr. Antwi holds a Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His recent book, “On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace”, is from Pluto Press. He’s currently finishing a manuscript called “Currencies of Blackness: Faithfulness, Cheerfulness and Politeness in Settler Writing”.

Talonbooks Spring 2026 Launch
2026-05-01 19:00 - 20:30 | Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall, 1955 McLean Dr, Vancouver, BC V5N 3J7, Vancouver, BC, V5N 3J7, Canada
Join us at the Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall for the launch of the Talonbooks spring 2026 titles! Come help us celebrate this season’s authors and books. Here’s the lineup! It’s going to be an amazing evening.
Taryn Hubbard will read from Beautiful Unknown Future
Jenn Ashton (attending digitally) will read from Growing My Way Home
George Bowering (attending digitally) will read from Pearl
Jónína Kirton will read from Save Your Prayers – Send Money
Elee Kraljii Gardiner will read from sometimes, forest
Nicole Raziya Fong will read from SUBTEXT and
Danielle LaFrance will read from Verbal Violence!
The launch will be hosted by the author of Future Works, Jeff Derksen!
A live stream will be available on the Talonbooks YouTube page. Light snacks and drinks will be provided. Hope to see you there!
Talonbooks Spring Launch
Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall
Vancouver, BC
May 1, 2026
Doors at 7 p.m., readings begin at 7:30 p.m. PDT

An Evening with Eve Joseph and Patrick Friesen
2026-05-02 19:00 - 20:30 | Upstart & Crow, 1387 Railspur Alley Vancouver, BC V6H 3R7, Vancouver, BC, V6H 3R7, Canada
Join us for a beautiful evening of poetry with local legends Eve Joseph and Patrick Friesen. The duo will be launching their latest collections and invite you to join them in readings and conversation. Tickets are free, but please RSVP for your spot here as capacity is limited.
In Eve Joseph’s latest book, Dismantling, the poet is occupied with the idea of poetic imagination and how that often elusive thing can transform the mundane into the mysterious. In a book where fish are classified as bees and rivers are legally people, things are not always as they seem. As the title suggests, sometimes the act of taking something apart and building again from scratch allows a poem to find its true form.
​​The poems in Patrick Friesen’s latest collection, Sightings, move between the visible and invisible, between the contradictions of human history and the immediacy of a complex present. Friesen examines memory and music, rivers and personalities, open to all possibilities and sceptical of wisdom. Instead, these poems rely on the kind of knowledge that comes from experience: tremors and fragments riding on the movement of thinking. The distance from Friesen’s first book, published 50 years ago, to this one, speaks to what it means to have known the world through poetry.
More about Upstart & Crow:
Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit creative studio and literary incubator that champions writers, readers and stories, and the role they play in shaping our lives. We develop original programs, support artists and revel in creative projects focused on Literature In Translation / Climate Solutions / Poetry / Civic Dialogue / Community & Skills Building … all with the aim of elevating the role of literature and storytelling in our lives. Find us on Granville Island, Gibsons and online at upstartandcrow.com.
Accessibility:
The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees.
Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.

Book launch: The Art of Looking Back by Theresa Kishkan
2026-05-29 13:00 - 15:00 | Sechelt Public Library, 5797 Cowrie St, Sechelt, BC, V0N 3A0, Canada
Join Theresa Kishkan for the release of her memoir, The Art of Looking Back: A Painter, an Obsession, and Reclaiming the Gaze.
Theresa examines her youth and her role as muse to Victoria artist Jack Wilkinson. More than a reminiscence, this poetic memoir asks questions about older men and younger women and girls, and the persistence of that dynamic in art.
