North Shore Reads: Outsider
2024-01-17 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom
Join the North Shore libraries for a community-wide book club event!
North Shore Reads — a collaboration between North Vancouver City Library, North Vancouver District Public Library, and West Vancouver Memorial Library — presents an evening with Brett Popplewell in conversation with Marsha Lederman. Popplewell will discuss his 2023 national bestseller Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past.
When journalist Brett Popplewell first heard about Dag Aabye, an aging former stuntman who lived alone in a school bus on a mountain, running day and night through blizzards and heat waves, he was intrigued and bewildered. Captivated by the seemingly implausible tale of a wild super-athlete aging more slowly than the rest of us, he was determined to meet the apocryphal white-haired man who was pushing the boundaries of the human mind and body beyond what anyone could dream was possible.
What Popplewell witnessed on a secluded mountain perch led him on a six-year odyssey to uncover the true story of the 81-year-old man. Outsider takes readers on a remarkable journey from Nazi-occupied Norway to Argentina and British Columbia. The book chronicles how a child born under mysterious circumstances during World War II finds his way onto the big screen in Goldfinger, is heralded as the world’s first extreme skier, and is later driven into the wilderness. Both joyful and tragic, Outsider presents a bold challenge to our notions of aging, belonging and human accomplishment.
North Shore Reads invites you to a dynamic conversation between Brett Popplewell and Marsha Lederman. Our program will begin with a traditional Indigenous welcome from Tsitsáyxemaat Rebecca Duncan of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nation.

Hockey Day in Canada Book Signing with Ron MacLean, Ken Reid, and Brian Burke
2024-01-19 11:30 - 13:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books for a Hockey Day in Canada book signing!!!
During the Hockey Day in Canada festivities this January, we will welcome hockey broadcasting and analysts Ron MacLean (long-time host of CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada), Ken Reid (Sportsnet Central sportscaster), and Brian Burke (NHL executive and analyst) into the store to meet you and sign books!
When you first meet Ron MacLean, he asks where you’re from, and he always comes back with a story. No one has crossed this country more than MacLean. In his 28 years on Hockey Night in Canada and now as host of Rogers’ Hometown Hockey, Ron has met fascinating people from coast to coast and has had great stories to tell. In Hockey Towns, MacLean shares untold stories of superstars Wayne Gretzky and Eric Lindros, of Original Six legends, of junior players who left their hearts on the ice, of blue-collar players who persevered. These tales of triumph and sometimes tragedy will resonate with hockey fans across the country. Once again working with Kirstie McLellan Day, co-author of the blockbuster bestsellers Playing with Fire, Tough Guy and Cornered, this is MacLean at his finest.
In many communities across Canada, hockey lives in the nearby arenas and leagues that forge both decades-long rivalries and unbreakable friendships. Fans show up to cheer not for distant NHL superstars, but for the homegrown heroes who define their town. These players don’t always make it to the big leagues, but they inevitably become legends. In the entertaining collection, Hometown Hockey Heroes, Canadian broadcaster and Sportsnet Central host Ken Reid tells their uplifting stories, from Pictou, Nova Scotia, to Kimberley, British Columbia—and everywhere in between.
In Burke’s Law, the gruffest man in hockey opens up about the challenges, the feuds, and the tragedies he’s fought through. Brian Burke is one of the biggest personalities in the media landscape. His brashness makes him a magnet for attention, and he does nothing to shy away from it. Most famous for advocating “pugnacity, truculence, testosterone, and belligerence” during his tenure with the Maple Leafs, Burke has lived and breathed hockey his whole life. He has been a player, an agent, a league executive, a scout, a Stanley Cup-winning GM, an Olympic GM, and a media analyst. He has worked with Pat Quinn, Gary Bettman, and an array of future Hall of Fame players.
WHEN: Friday, January 19th, 11:30AM – 1:00 PM
WHERE: in-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government St.
WHAT: A meet and greet and book signing with Ron MacLean, Ken Reid, and Brian Burke
HOW: This event is free to attend

Write Your Novel or Memoir
2024-01-22 13:00 - 14:00 | North Vancouver Public Library – Parkgate branch, 3675 Banff Court, North Vancouver, BC, V7H 2Z8, Canada
Do you want to write a novel or a memoir?
Please join author, Julianne Harvey, of Ruby Finch Books for a fun writing class. We will talk about the things that hold us back when we want to write, brainstorm ideas and outlines for your upcoming projects, and do some journaling and writing prompts together in a supportive and kind atmosphere. Please bring a notebook & pen or a laptop.
Julianne has written four books and her work has appeared in several literary magazines. She holds an MFA and a BA in Creative Writing. For more information, please see julianneharvey.com and rubyfinchbooks.com.
Registration required. Register online or call 604-929-3727, ext. 8166. Contact Vanessa at gillv@nvdpl.ca for more information.
This event takes place in the Enid Dearing Room at Parkgate Library.

Wild Prose Reading Series Presents: The Subversives
2024-01-25 19:00 - 22:00 | Paul Phillips Hall, 1923 Fernwood Road, Victoria, BC, V8T 0A5, Canada
Please join us for The Subversives—readings from books about women and nonbinary people subverting the status quo. JD Derbyshire will read from Mercy Gene, the Man-Made Making of a Madwoman, a genre-smashing work of auto-fiction about gender confusion, patriarchy, addiction, and mental health; Kathryn Mockler will read from her book of short stories, Anecdotes, a book of varied, immersive works that bristle with truth in the face of unprecedented change; and Emi Sasagawa will read from her debut novel, Atomweight, about a “good girl” who becomes herself through fighting—a novel about the need to reconcile competing cultures, traditions, and values and explores sexual identity and violence. The evening will begin with an open mic at 7:00 p.m. The open mic will be opened by local writer Justina Elias, reading “To Do,” her Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Award-winning story, published in issue #217 of The Malahat Review – and then it’ll open up to YOU! Bring some writing of any genre to share (poetry is very welcome)!

Author talk with Anthea Penne
2024-02-01 11:30 - 12:30 | North Vancouver Public Library – Parkgate branch, 3675 Banff Court, North Vancouver, BC, V7H 2Z8, Canada
Join Anthea Penne, author of Old Stones, as she reads excerpts from her novel and discusses the research behind it.
At the end of the Second World War nearly 50,000 women emigrated to Canada from Britain and the continent. For those women, the Atlantic crossing marked the beginning of a great adventure: a new country, a new life and a new husband. But those transcontinental marriages often created a dual heritage for the children of the unions, making “home” difficult to define. In Old Stones, the gap between Anthea’s privileged English and provincial Canadian backgrounds is made achingly clear in family stories from both continents. An unsentimental look at a war-time union, Old Stones is an inquiry into one woman’s very different backgrounds as well as a candid examination of a family’s cultural divide.
Registration required. Register online or call 604-929-3727, ext. 8166. Contact Vanessa at gillv@nvdpl.ca for more information.
This event takes place in the Enid Dearing Meeting Room at Parkgate Library.

Challenge to Civilization: Indigenous Wisdom & the Future -Blair Stonechild
2024-02-03 14:00 - 17:00 | British Columbia
ONLINE EVENT
On Saturday, February 3rd at 2pm (Vancouver time) join Massy Arts, Massy Books and University of Regina Press for the launch of Challenge to Civilization: Indigenous Wisdom and the Future by Blair Stonechild with guest Jesse Archibald-Barber.
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 online on zoom, all listed times are in the Vancouver time zone.
Closed captioning can be accessed via zoom.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
About the book
In this final book of his trilogy, Dr. Stonechild deftly illustrates how Indigenous spirituality, wisdom, and land-based knowledge is critical to human survival in the face of environmental destruction and human-induced climate change. Reinterpreting world history from an Indigenous perspective, Stonechild’s solution to this unfolding catastrophe is “ecolization,” a state in which humans recognize they are not the central purpose of creation and a way of existing harmoniously with the natural and spiritual worlds.
Beautifully written, urgent, and critical, Challenge to Civilization reminds us that it is not Earth that is in danger of extinction, but ourselves, and Indigenous spiritual wisdom can be the guiding light through what will otherwise be humanity’s final, ever-darkening days.
About the author
Blair A. Stonechild is a member of the Muscowpetung First Nation in Saskatchewan. He is a residential school survivor and was the first faculty member hired at the First Nations University of Canada in 1976. He is an author of five previous books and lives in Regina with his wife Sylvia and three adult children.
About the guest reader
Jesse Archibald-Barber is from oskana kâ-asastêki. He teaches Indigenous Literatures in English at the First Nations University of Canada, specializing in Saskatchewan Indigenous literary history and early Indigenous literatures in Canada.

Design Book Club
2024-02-06 18:00 | British Columbia
Don’t worry, this isn’t a commitment to a monthly book club!
SEGD Vancouver in partnership with DesCan (Design Professionals of Canada)​ is holding a one-off night where we come together to geek out on our favourite design books amongst some beverages and snacks. You may have had a great holiday read, a book you’ve loved for years, or even one that you’ve been meaning to open for ages and now we’re giving you the impetus to read up over the next month!
Books can cover the realm of art, design, architecture, urban planning, creativity – the list goes on! We would love if everyone could bring one or more of their favourite books that they’ve read at least a good chunk of (we will too), and be ready to chat about it with other people. Maybe you can even come home with someone else’s book if they’re open to a swap! We also accept the book-less that are just looking to learn about some new reads.
If you have books accumulating dust on your shelves, bring them along, we’ll have a dedicated space for any books seeking new homes.
When: Tuesday, February 6th, 6 – 8 pm
Where:Massy Arts Society​, 23 E Pender St, Vancouver, BC V6A 1S9

Book Launch: Cold by Drew Hayden Taylor
2024-02-14 18:00 | British Columbia
On Wednesday, February 14th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, Penguin Random House Canada for the launch of Cold by Drew Hayden Taylor with host Sam Wiebe.
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:
Cold (Penguin Random House Canada, 2024)
A tragic plane crash that leaves two women stranded and fighting for their lives kicks off this sweeping and hilarious novel from award-winning writer Drew Hayden Taylor that blends thriller, murder mystery, and horror with humour and spectacle.
Elmore Trent is a professor of Indigenous studies who finds himself entangled in an affair that’s ruining his marriage; Paul North plays in the IHL (Indigenous Hockey League), struggling to keep up with the game that’s passing him by; Detective Ruby Birch is chasing a string of gruesome murders, with clues that conspicuously lead her to both Elmore and Paul. And then there’s Fabiola Halan, former journalist-turned-author and famed survivor of a plane crash that sparked a nationwide tour promoting her book.
What starts off as a series of subtle connections between isolated characters quickly takes a menacing turn, as it becomes increasingly clear that someone—or something—is hunting them all.
Taking tropes from the murder mystery, police procedural, thriller, and horror genres, Drew Hayden Taylor weaves a pulse-pounding and propulsive narrative with an intricate cast of characters, while never losing the ability to make you laugh.
About the author:
DREW HAYDEN TAYLOR has done many things, most of which he is proud of. An Ojibway from the Curve Lake First Nations in Ontario, he has worn many hats in his career, from performing stand-up comedy at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., to being Artistic Director of Canada’s premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. He has been an award-winning playwright (with over 100 productions of his work), a journalist/columnist (appearing regularly in several Canadian newspapers, magazines, and news networks), short story writer, novelist, television scriptwriter, and has worked on over 20 documentaries exploring the Native experience including the popular Searching for Winnetou. His documentary series on APTN, Going Native, is in its third year. The author of 34 books, he looks forward to finding out where his imagination will take him next.
About the host:
Sam Wiebe is the author of the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada. His latest, Sunset and Jericho (2023), was a BC bestseller for over ten weeks, and Hell and Gone (2021) won a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. His work has also won the Crime Writers of Canada award and the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus and City of Vancouver book prizes. He lives in New Westminster, BC.

Best Canadian Poetry 2024 selected by Bardia Sinaee
2024-02-20 18:00 | British Columbia
On Tuesday, February 20th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, Biblioasis for the launch of Best Canadian Poetry 2024.
The following volume contributors will be reading at the event: Nicholas Bradley, Aislinn Hunter, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Barbara Nickel, Matt Rader, Meagan Rondeau, Joanna Streetly, and Rob Taylor.
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
Selected by editor Bardia Sinaee, the 2024 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2022.
Featuring:
David Barrick • Nina Berkhout • Nicholas Bradley • Alison Braid • Louise Carson • Hilary Clark • Erin Conway-Smith • Nancy Jo Cullen • Kayla Czaga • Rocco de Giacomo • Jean Eng • Joel Robert Ferguson • Susan Gillis • Luke Hathaway • Beatriz Hausner • Robert Hogg • Evan Jones • Meghan Kemp-Gee • Joseph Kidney • Matthew King • Sarah Lachmansingh • T. Liem • Seth MacGregor • Sadie McCarney • Erin McGregor • Anna Moore • Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin • Barbara Nickel • Peter Norman • Tolu Oloruntoba • Michael Ondaatje • Jana Prikryl • Matt Rader • Monty Reid • Lisa Richter • Meaghan Rondeau • Olajide Salawu • Francesca Schulz-Bianco • James Scoles • Allan Serafino • Sue Sinclair • Carolyn Smart • Misha Solomon • John Steffler • John Elizabeth Stintzi • Joanna Streetly • Rob Taylor • Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang • James Warner • Elana Wolff
About Bardia Sinaee
Bardia Sinaee’s poetry, essays, and book reviews have appeared in magazines throughout Canada. His first book, Intruder (House of Anansi, 2021), received the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. He was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives in Ottawa.

Sheila Heti in Conversation with Lee Henderson
2024-02-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launch of Sheila Heti’s latest book, Alphabetical Diaries. Sheila will be in conversation with UVic writing professor, Lee Henderson.
Munro’s Books is pleased to present two Canadian award-winning authors, Sheila Heti and Lee Henderson, in conversation at their store on Tuesday, February 20th at 7:00 p.m. Sheila Heti will read from her new book Alphabetical Diaries and then chat about it with local fiction writer and UVic creative writing professor, Lee Henderson. The evening will end with a Q&A with audience members and a book signing with Sheila Heti. This event is free to attend.
A little over a decade ago, Sheila Heti—the award-winning author of a string of modern classics including How Should a Person Be?, Motherhood, and Pure Colour—began looking back at the diaries she’d kept over the previous ten years, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She loaded all 500,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel, to order the sentences alphabetically and seek out patterns and repetitions. How many times had she written, “I hate him,” for example? With the sentences untethered from the narrative of her diaries, she started to see herself—and the Self—in a new way: as something quite solid, anchored by shockingly few characteristic preoccupations. Returning to the project over the years, something more universal and novelistic emerged. Alphabetical Diaries is the sublime and probing result—one that rises to the heights of artistry and insight for which Heti is rightfully acclaimed.
Sheila Heti is one of our greatest literary innovators and has been pushing boundaries with her work since the age of 24, when she published her first book, the short-story collection, The Middle Stories, in 2001. She’s since won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature, and has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Heti’s fiction and criticism have appeared in the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Granta.
WHEN: Tuesday, February 20th at 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30).
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government St.
WHAT: A reading by Sheila Heti from her latest book, followed by a conversation with Lee Henderson and a Q&A with the audience.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

The Deepest Map by Laura Trethewey and Pitfall by Christopher Pollon
2024-02-21 18:00 | British Columbia
On Wednesday, February 21st, at 6pm join Massy Arts, Massy Books, Goose Lane Editions and Greystone Books in celebrating the launch of The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans by Laura Trethewey with guest Christopher Pollon.
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 books:
The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans (Goose Lane Editions, 2023)
Five oceans cover approximately seventy per cent of the earth, yet we know little of what lies beneath them. Scientists, investors, militaries, and private explorers are all vying to be the first to completely map the oceans’ floor.
In The Deepest Map, Laura Trethewey chronicles this race to the bottom. Crossing the globe, Trethewey documents Inuit-led crowdsourced mapping in the Arctic as climate change alters the landscape, a Texas millionaire’s efforts to become the first man to dive to the deepest point in each ocean, and investigates the increasingly fraught question of whether and how to mine the deep sea.
Pitfall: The Race to Mine the World’s Most Vulnerable Places (Greystone Books, 2023)
A harrowing journey through the past, present, and future of mining, this expertly-researched account ends on a vision for how industry can better serve the needs of humanity.
A race is on to exploit the last bonanzas of gold, silver, and industrial metals left on Earth. These metals are not only essential for all material comfort and need, but for the transition to clean energy: in the coming decades, billions of tons of copper, nickel, silver, and other metals will be required to build electric vehicles, solar and wind installations, and green infrastructure. We need more metals than ever before, yet the qualities and quantities are diminishing, making the extraction process more polluting to land, air and water. And most of these metals will be mined from the global south, where social conflict will only grow, led by Indigenous peoples demanding a greater say in how their wealth is used.
About the authors:
Laura Trethewey is an author and ocean journalist whose writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Atlantic, and the Walrus. Her first book, The Imperilled Ocean, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Selection. In The Deepest Map, she continues to explore the mysteries of the oceans and their watery depths.
Christopher Pollon is an independent journalist who reports on the politics of natural resources, focusing on mining, oceans, and energy. His work has appeared in dozens of publications, including National Geographic, VICE, the Walrus, the Tyee, and the Globe and Mail. He is also the author of The Peace in Peril: The Real Cost of the Site C Dam. He lives in Vancouver, BC.

Dr. Jen Gunter in Conversation
2024-02-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Victoria Conference Centre, 720 Douglas Street, Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 3M7, Canada
Join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launch of Dr. Jen Gunter’s newest book, Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation. We’ll present Dr. Gunter in conversation with UVic Gender Studies Professor Dr. Thea Cacchioni, followed by a Q&A with the audience (no requests for medical advice, please) and a book signing!
Blood, The galvanizing new book from Dr. Jen Gunter, #1 bestselling author of The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Manifesto, dispels the shame, mythology, and misinformation around menstruation with scientific facts, medical expertise, and a fierce feminist perspective.
Most of us know about as much about how the uterus and ovaries function as we do about how the liver works. Add in societal shame around the menstrual cycle and it’s not surprising that misinformation is widespread. But, as women’s health advocate and trusted OB-GYN Dr. Jen Gunter writes, “you don’t have to think about your liver 5 days a month for 30 years, so I’d argue people should know more about the uterus.” Enter Blood.
In her new book, Dr. Gunter offers a clear, no-nonsense guide to reproductive anatomy and answers all the questions you never knew you had about menstrual bleeding—for example, where does the blood come from? And where does it go if you miss a period? Why do we even menstruate in the first place? With her expertise and trademark wit, Dr. Gunter debunks myths and challenges patriarchal attitudes toward this natural bodily process.
Dr. Jen Gunter is board certified in OB/GYN and pain medicine. She writes about the intersection of women’s health, sex, science, and pop culture for the New York Times. She has been called a fierce advocate for women’s health, Twitter’s gynecologist, and “strangely confident” by GOOP.com. She believes an empowered patient requires facts and she is here to fix the medical Internet and smash the patriarchy.
Dr. Thea Cacchioni is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies at UVic. Her research examines the medicalization of sex, gender, and sexuality, broadly, as well as through specific diagnoses such as Female Sexual Dysfunction and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. She is interested in the ways in which doctors, psychiatrists, and more recently, drug companies shape understandings of “normalcy” and “deviance” across categories of gender, racialization, and class. Her work examines the pathologization of some sexual acts and identities and the “healthicization” of others.
WHEN: Saturday, February 24th at 7:00PM (doors at 6:30)
WHERE: Victoria Conference Centre Lecture Theatre, 720 Douglas St. in Victoria
WHAT: Dr. Jen Gunter in conversation with Dr. Thea Cacchioni, followed by a Q&A with the audience (no requests for medical advice, please) and a book signing
HOW: Tickets can be purchased HERE: https://jengunterblood.eventbrite.ca
Book plus ticket: $42 (includes a copy of BLOOD to be picked up at the event)
Ticket: $20

Best Canadian Poetry in English 2024 Launch Party!!
2024-02-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Fortune Gallery, 537 Fisgard Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1R3, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launch of the Best Canadian Poetry in English 2024!
Local poet Yvonne Blomer will host a reading by five of this year’s local poets included in the collection: Nicholas Bradley, Kayla Czaga, Hilary Clark, Anna Moore, and Joanna Streetly.
Praise for the book includes:
“Buy it, or borrow it, but do read it.” —Arc Poetry Magazine
“A magnet, I think, for the many people who would like to know contemporary poetry.” —A.F. Moritz, Griffin Poetry Prize winner
WHEN: Wednesday, February 28th, 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: Fortune Gallery, 537 Fisgard St. in Victoria
WHAT: Readings by Nicholas Bradley, Kayla Czaga, Hilary Clark, Anna Moore, and Joanna Streetly, hosted by Yvonne Blomer.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

Zaatari: Culinary Traditions from a Syrian Refugee Camp
2024-03-02 14:00 - 17:00 | British Columbia
How do you preserve the tastes of home when you’ve been forced to flee the place you’re from?
In Zaatari, Karen E. Fisher takes us to the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world, home to over 80,000 people, and shares the stories, the recipes, the traditions and the art of its indomitable residents. More than a cookbook, it is an immersive culinary tour full of culture, vitality and perseverance.
Mohammad Shwamra, a resident of Zaatari Camp who was editorial and production assistant for this book, is traveling to Canada to join Karen for this book presentation.
Karen and Mohammad will appear in conversation with Nihal Elwan, entrepreneur and founder of Tayybeh, a catering company and social enterprise in Vancouver, that provides steady employment opportunities for Syrian newcomer women.
—
Karen E. Fisher is a Professor at the Information School, and Adjunct Professor in the Communication Department at the University of Washington. She is also an embedded field ethnographer for UNHCR Jordan, Adjunct Professor, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland, and Visiting Professor at the Information School, Siegen University, DE. Karen’s focus is the Syrian war and she works in the Levant, and much of her work is at UNHCR Za’atari Camp in Jordan, where she’s led projects like the Za’atari Camp Cookbook—a multi-year co-design project with over 2000 Syrians about preserving indigenous knowledge of food, Arab medicine and culture; and Za’atari Camp Libraries—the world’s first, refugee-run, camp-wide library system.
Nihal Elwan is the founder of Tayybeh Foods, a social enterprise, caterer, food processor, and restaurant with a mission to empower and uplift newcomer and refugee women from Syria and the Middle East. Since its inception in 2017, Tayybeh has received multiple awards including “Foodies of the Year” by Western Living magazine, “Champion of Women” Award from Voices of Muslim Women, the City of Vancouver’s Award of Excellence, and most recently the Enterprise of the Year Award by the Francophone Chamber of Commerce. Nihal’s academic background is in Anthropology, International Development studies and Economics, with over 15 years of professional experience researching, implementing, monitoring and evaluating economic and social inclusion programmes, with special focus on gender and women’s issues in the Middle East.

History in Novels: Sarah Mughal & Xiran Jay Zhao - Hope Ablaze & Iron Widow
2024-03-03 14:00 - 17:00 | British Columbia
On Sunday, March 3rd at 2pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and St Martin’s Press for the launch of Hope Ablaze by Sarah Mughal Rana in conversation with Xiran Jay Zhao and Emily Varga as they discuss how colonial history and their cultures inspired and shaped their writings.
With a touch of magic and poetry sprinkled throughout, Canadian author Sarah Mughal Rana’s Hope Ablaze is heartbreaking, often funny, and ultimately uplifting, not only celebrating the Islamic faith and Pakistani culture, but simultaneously confronting racism and Islamophobia with unflinching bravery.
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:
Hope Ablaze (St. Martin’s Press, 2024)
All My Rage meets The Poet X in this electric debut that explores a Muslim teen finding her voice in a post-9/11 America.
Nida has always been known as Mamou Abdul-Hafeedh’s niece – the poet that will fill her uncle’s shoes after he was wrongfully incarcerated during the war on terror. But for Nida, her poetry letters are her heart and sharing so much of herself with a world that stereotypes her faith and her hijab is not an option.
When Nida is illegally frisked at a Democratic Senatorial candidate’s political rally, she writes a scathing poem about the politician, never expecting the letter to go viral weeks before Election Day. Nida discovers her poem has won first place in a national contest, a contest she never entered, and her quiet life is toppled. But worst of all, Nida loses her ability to write poetry. In the aftermath of her win, Nida struggles to balance the expectations of her mother, her uncle, and her vibrant Muslim community with the person she truly wants to be.
About the author:
Sarah Mughal Rana, author of the debut novel Hope Ablaze, is a writer and student at Oxford University, pursuing her MPhil at the intersection of human rights and policy. She is a BookTok personality and the co-host of On the Write Track Podcast where she enjoys spilling tea with her favourite authors about the book world. Outside of school, she falls down history rabbit holes and trains in traditional martial arts. These days can find her on Instagram & Tiktok .
About the guest:
Xiran Jay Zhao is the #1 New-York-Times-bestselling author of the Iron Widow series and Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor. Their books have been a finalist or winner of many awards, including the Nebula, BFSA, and Locus awards. A first-gen Hui Chinese immigrant from small-town China to Vancouver, Canada, they were raised by the Internet and made the inexplicable decision to leave their biochem degree in the dust to write books and make educational content instead. You can find them on Twitter for memes, Instagram for cosplays and fancy outfits, TikTok for fun short videos, and YouTube for long videos about Chinese history and culture.
About the moderator:
Emily Varga is a YA Fantasy author with a fondness for getting lost in bookstores, eating copious amounts of rice, and watching a lot of terrible reality tv. She has lived all over the world, but currently calls the Rocky Mountains of western Canada home, where she lives with her family and their menagerie of pets. When she’s not writing, Emily works as a family lawyer, where she learned more about storytelling than she ever expected. Emily’s debut novel FOR SHE IS WRATH is a Pakistani-inspired Count of Monte Cristo retelling meets Kill Bill and is out in fall 2024 with Wednesday Books.

Under the Table: Poetry Open Mic
2024-03-06 18:00 | British Columbia
Under The Table Open Mic Series
On Wednesday March 6th at 6pm PDT, join Massy Arts Society and a collective of brilliant poet organizers for the first Under The Table Open Mic of the year! This event will not have a feature poet, leaving even more space for our wonderful open mic-ers! Sign-up for the open mic at the venue upon arrival.
*Please note this show is on a Wednesday! We will resume with our events on the first Tuesday of each month starting in April*
(we run on crip time with the understanding that bodies and brains aren’t always on schedule)
We invite you to sign up for the open mic as Under The Table welcomes us to laugh, cry, celebrate and sit in the richness of queer and disabled life, writing and poetics.
This event will unfortunately not have ASL interpretation. We are working to secure funding to continue having ASL at future events.
Under the Table is an open mic series centering disabled and/or queer poets. This series was dreamed up out of a desire to share work, experience art, and connect with community in a covid safer, more accessible, and anti-oppressive space. Partnering with Massy Art Gallery and Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture, Under the Table Open Mic Series will be on the first Tuesday of each month (with the exception of this month!) with some events in person at Massy Arts Society and others virtually on zoom.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Massy Arts Gallery is a single-level space, in one single room. The entryway to the building is 38″ wide, with a transition less than 0.5″. The front door is a push door that swings inward to the left. There is no automatic opening door or switch but the door will stay open until the show starts. There is one gender inclusive bathroom in the space. The door is not automatic. Pull to enter, push to exit. The width of the doorway is 90cm / 35.5in. The bathroom is 45sq ft. There are two sets of grab bars located behind and to the right of the toilet.The space is a scent-free space. We kindly ask that event attendees refrain from wearing scented products in the space. The venue has a scent free soap and uses scent free cleaning products.
This event will unfortunately not have ASL interpretation. We are working to secure funding to continue having ASL at future events. For more info on accessibility including transit and parking, seating, and venue measurements and floor plan, please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility. If you have questions about accessibility at this event please email us at info@massyarts.com or underthetablepoetry@gmail.com
COVID-19 SAFETY
Masks are required for this event (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection) and will be provided for anyone who does not bring one. There will be an air purifier in the space as well as antibacterial microphone covers. The host and feature poet will rapid test before the event and we encourage attendees to rapid test before coming as well. We ask that you stay home if you are showing symptoms or had a recent exposure.
About Under The Table:
Under the Table is a space where the richness that is queer and disabled life and art, flourishes and finds a home. It’s a space to share work that’s asking to be told, but might not be welcomed in other spaces, if you are able to access those spaces at all. It’s a space where being queer and/or disabled (whether or not those specific words resonate for you) makes your work a brilliant fit, regardless of how queer or disabled you think the poetry you wish to share is, how connected you are to disabled and/or queer community, and whether you feel disabled and/or queer “enough” to participate. Come to “Under the Table” to laugh, cry, celebrate, sit in discomfort, feel understood, and be together.

Dinner on Monster Island by Tania De Rozario with Lydia Kwa and Joanne Leow
2024-03-07 18:00 - 18:30 | British Columbia
On Thursday, March 7th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Harper Perennial in celebrating the launch of Dinner on Monster Island by Tania De Rozario with guests Lydia Kwa and Joanne Leow, moderated by Kanksha Chawla.
“In Dinner on Monster Island, Tania De Rozario brilliantly exorcises the demons of her upbringing—an evangelical mother, homophobic policies and culturally pervasive fatphobia—using horror films as an outlet and metaphor for her estrangement. As a writer, De Rozario is searing, stirring, and soaring.” — Kevin Chong, Author of The Double Life of Benson Yu.
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. We are located in the former MING WO building.
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:
Dinner on Monster Island (Harper Perennial, 2024)
Tania De Rozario was just twelve when she was gay-exorcised. That day, the young girl realized that monsters weren’t just found in horror tales. They could lurk anywhere—including your own family and community—and look just like you. Dinner on Monster Island is a collection of essays that examines De Rozario’s experiences growing up a queer, Brown, fat girl in Singapore, intertwined with analyses of women in horror films. Moving and lyrical, it is a deeply personal examination of one woman’s experience grappling with identity and a fantastic analysis of monsters, monstrous women and the worlds in which they live.
About the author:
Tania De Rozario is a writer, visual artist and the author of four books. Her work has won the New Ohio Review Nonfiction Contest (2020), the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest (2021), Singapore’s Golden Point Award (2011) and was a finalist for a 2021 Lambda Literary Award. Her visual art has been showcased in galleries and art spaces in Singapore, Amsterdam, London, Spain and San Francisco. Born in Singapore, she lives on the traditional unceded territories of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
About the guests:
Lydia Kwa has published two books of poetry (The Colours of Heroines, 1992; sinuous, 2013) and five novels (This Place Called Absence, 2000; The Walking Boy, 2005 and 2019; Pulse, 2010 and 2014; Oracle Bone, 2017; A Dream Wants Waking, 2023). A third book of poetry from time to new will be published by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2024. (Headshot credit: Joshua Paul)
Joanne Leow grew up in Singapore and 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 in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University. She is also a poet and writer with a debut collection of poetry, Seas Move Away (2022), published by Turnstone Press. (Headshot credit: Sweetmoon photography)
About the moderator:
Kanksha Chawla (she/they) is an Indian immigrant who grew up in Singapore and lives on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is an organizer, writer, and student of English Literature at Simon Fraser University. Her work has appeared in anthologies and zines including Crazy Little Pyromaniacs: 35 Poets Under 35 (Math Paper Press) and We are the Fossil Free Future (S4F).

Dead Poets Reading Series
2024-03-10 18:00 | British Columbia
Join Massy Arts Society on Sunday, March 10th at 3pm for the next Dead Poets Reading Series, as deep threads of connection and solidarity are drawn between local, contemporary poets and a diverse array of poets from the past.
We welcome you to an afternoon reflection and celebration, as poetic conversation and recitation travel through time.
Registration is free/by donation, open to all and required for entrance.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver. We are located in the former MING WO building.
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 readers and poets:
Rahat Kurd’s publications include THE CITY THAT IS LEAVING FOREVER: KASHMIRI LETTERS (co-authored with Sumayya Syed, Talonbooks 2021) and COSMOPHILIA (Talonbooks 2015).
reading:
PARVEEN SHAKIR (1952-1994), born in Karachi, Pakistan, began to write poetry in Urdu at a young age. Her first book, KHUSHBU [Fragrance] was published in 1976, and was widely acclaimed for her contemporary approach to classical ghazal poetics, grounding lived experience in a feminine voice. Shakir was tragically killed in a car accident in Islamabad at the age of 42. She left behind a young son and several published poetry volumes; one final work, KAF-E-AINA [The Mirror’s Edge] was published posthumously.
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Devon Rae (she/her) is a queer writer from Montreal who now lives in Vancouver. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Arc Poetry Magazine, PRISM International, Canthius, SAD Magazine, Touch the Donkey, Periodicities, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, Thirteen Conversations with My Body, will be published by Anstruther Press in 2024.
reading:
Ikkyū Sōjun (1394 – 1481) was an eccentric and iconoclastic Zen master and a prolific poet. He also had a profound influence on Japanese tea ceremony, calligraphy, and shakuhachi (bamboo flute). When he was appointed abbot of Daitokuji Temple, he left after just nine days to protest the rampant hypocrisy, and told the monks to go looking for him in fish stalls, bars, and brothels. Ikkyu (or Crazy Cloud, as he was also known) loved Zen, sake, and women, and famously burned his enlightenment certificate to ashes.
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RC Weslowski is an award-winning poet, broadcaster, podcaster, clown and MC. He’s performed at and led workshops at festival across Turtle Island and parts of Europe. His first collection of poetry “My Soft Response to the Wars” is available now from Write Bloody North Publishing www.writebloodynorth.ca
reading:
Ian Ferrier (1954-2023) was a poet, performer and musician; author of four books of poetry and prose: Quel est ce lieu (Éditions du Noroît 2017); Bear Dreams (Popolo Press, 2016); Coming & Going (Popolo Press 2015); Exploding Head Man (Planète rebelle 2000). 3 releases on compact disc: Pharmakon MTL (BongoBeat 2011); What is This Place (BongoBeat 2007); Exploding Head Man (Wired on Words 2000) ; founder of The Canadian Review of Literature in Performance (LITLIVE.CA); founder and Executive Producer of Wired on Words, a label that releases spoken word and poetry and music projects; founder and curator of annual Mile End Poets’ Festival (Montreal, Canada) and of the monthly Words & Music Show (Montreal), now in its 17th year. His essays have appeared in the Review of the Americas, Canadian Theatre Review and The Canadian Review of Literature in Performance. A former president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, he resided in Montreal. He toured poetry and music shows in North America and Europe as a solo artist and with the spoken word/dance company For Body and Light. ( http://forbodyandlight.org )
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Estlin McPhee is a writer and librarian who lives on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Estlin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and is the author of the poetry chapbook Shapeshifters (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2018). For many years they co-organized REVERB, a queer reading series in Vancouver, with the wonderful Leah Horlick. Estlin’s debut poetry collection is forthcoming in spring 2025 with Brick Books.
reading:
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was born in Kent, England. He served in the trenches during the First World War, where he began to write the poems for which he is remembered. Dispatched as “shell-shocked” to hospital, he organised public protest against the war. Sassoon was gay, and after the war he had a series of relationships with other men, including most famously with socialite Stephen Tennant. Sassoon’s poetry initially met with little response, but his reputation grew steadily in the following decades, though it is as a novelist and autobiographer that he is perhaps better known.

Author to Author: The Fusion of Fact and Fiction
2024-03-13 19:00 - 20:00 | North Vancouver Public Library – Lynn Valley branch, 1277 Lynn Valley Road, North Vancouver, BC, V7J 0A2, Canada
“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.” —Francis Bacon
Critically acclaimed authors Tara McGuire and Frances Peck create worlds that feel real because of accurate local and technical details, and also journey into emotional and psychological truths that only fiction can reveal.
In this inspiring author conversation, Tara and Frances will discuss the making of their books: their process, research, characters, themes, and the choices they made to blend fact and fiction on the page.
Their books will be for sale (cash or e-transfer).
Author Bios:
Tara McGuire is a writer and broadcaster from North Vancouver. Her first book, Holden After & Before — Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose, a hybrid work in memoir and fiction exploring grief, motherhood, and the overdose crisis (Arsenal Pulp Press), was recognized by The Walrus as one of the favourite books of 2022 and was a finalist for the 2023 City of Vancouver Book Award. https://taramcguire.com/
Frances Peck is the author of Uncontrolled Flight, a “complex and revelatory” (Vancouver Sun) story about the death of an aerial firefighter. Her previous novel, The Broken Places, about an earthquake rocking Vancouver, was a Globe and Mail best book of 2022 and a finalist for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. She lives in North Vancouver.
Registration required. Register online or call 604-984-0286, ext. 8144.
This event takes place in the Community Meeting Room at Lynn Valley Library.

Book Launch: Holly Ringland and Tamara Goranson
2024-03-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books to launch new fantastical novels by Holly Ringland and Tamara Goranson!!
Holly Ringland’s new novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, is a haunting, magical novel about joy, grief, courage and transformation that follows from the international bestselling, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.
‘On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden.’
The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura’s disappearance, Esther’s family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from Lutruwita/Tasmania, to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body. The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a sweeping, deeply beautiful and profoundly moving novel about the far reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.
Holly Ringland is the author of the award-winning international bestseller The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, adapted into a seven-part TV series on Amazon Prime, starring Sigourney Weaver. After living between Australia and the UK for ten years, Holly has been based in the Yugambeh region of southeast Queensland since 2020, where she wrote The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding in her “office,” a vintage caravan named Frenchie.
Tamara Goranson’s Oath of Bjorn is Book 3 of her Vinland Viking Saga. Anja has just settled into a new life on the silver shores of Vinland with her beloved, Bjorn. But then a local warrior bursts onto the scene seeking revenge, swearing to spill Viking blood. And so Bjorn must risk everything to save the woman he loves before she steps into the darkness and sets their world ablaze. The Oath of Bjorn is an epic historical novel of gripping adventure and love everlasting – perfect for fans of Vikings and Outlander.
Tamara Goranson holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology as well as Adjunct Professor status at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She published several academic pieces before she turned to writing short stories, creative non-fiction, and historical fiction, winning 3rd prize in the 2019 Vancouver Island Writers’ Association annual general contest for her nonfiction piece, ‘A Voice in Time’. She lives in Victoria with her husband and two daughters.
WHEN: Wednesday, March 13th, 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30).
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government St. in Victoria.
WHAT: Readings by Holly Ringland and Tamara Goranson, followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

Kazim Ali and Friends
2024-03-14 18:00 | British Columbia
On Thursday, March 14th at 6pm, join Massy Arts and Massy Books in celebrating the work of Kazim Ali and Friends: Cecily Nicholson, Bronwen Tate, Jen Currin and Hari Alluri, with host Brandon Wint.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

SFU Open Mic Remix: The Second
2024-03-16 18:00 | British Columbia
On Saturday, March 16th, the SFU Creative Writing Club would like to present SFU OPEN MIC REMIX: THE SECOND. Our now second open mic event open to SFU and the community at large! Swing by to enjoy the work of local wordsmiths, and maybe take the stage yourself!
This event is FREE and will start at 6PM (doors open at 5:30pm) at the Massy Art Society, taking place on the unceded territory of səlilwətaɬ, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations.

Mysterious Book Launch: Susan Juby, Kate Hilton, and Elizabeth Renzetti
2024-03-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launch of two new mysteries: A Meditation on Murder by Susan Juby and Bury the Lead by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti!!
In A Meditation on Murder, Butler-detective Helen Thorpe returns to help a wannabe influencer get her life in order—and solve the murders of her fellow content creators—in this hilarious sequel to Mindful of Murder by bestselling author Susan Juby.
When Buddhist butler Helen Thorpe is loaned out to help Cartier Hightower get her life in order, Helen finds herself working for a young woman entirely unbound by the fetters of good taste or sound judgment. One of Cartier’s fellow content creators has recently died in a strange accident. Soon after Helen arrives, another is killed in an equally bizarre way. Cartier begins to drag Helen around on the influencer circuit, where neither of them is particularly welcome. Then comes the terrible incident at the EDM nightclub that turns Cartier into a global pariah, at least according to social media. Helen hopes a period of simplicity and reflection and an internet detox will help Cartier find her true nature and maybe acquire some social graces. But Helen’s job gets much harder when Cartier’s friends show up at the lavish ranch where Cartier and Helen have retreated. Soon, Helen finds herself trying to avoid becoming Instafamous while bringing some peace to a girl who very much needs it. This task turns out to be even more impossible when it becomes clear that they have been followed to Weeping Creek Ranch by a murderer.
In Bury the Lead, a big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country and finds a community full of secrets … and murder.
Cat Conway has recently returned to Port Ellis to work as a reporter at the Quill & Packet. She’s fled the tattered remains of her high-profile career and bad divorce for the holiday town of her childhood, famous for its butter tarts, theatre, and a century-old feud. One of Cat’s first assignments is to interview legendary actor Eliot Fraser, the lead in the theatre’s season opener of Inherit the Wind. When Eliot ends up dead onstage on opening night, the curtain rises on the sleepy town’s secrets. The suspects include the actor whose career Eliot ruined, the ex-wife he betrayed, the women he abused, and even the baker he wronged. With the attention of the world on Port Ellis, this story could be Cat’s chance to restore her reputation. But the police think she’s a suspect, and the murderer wants to kill the story-and her too. Can Cat solve the mystery before she loses her job or becomes the next victim of a killer with a theatrical bent for vengeance?
Susan Juby is the award-winning, bestselling author of Mindful of Murder, which debuted at number one on the independent bookstores’ bestseller list and was nominated for the Leacock Medal for Humour. She has also written Getting the Girl, Another Kind of Cowboy and The Woefield Poultry Collective, as well as the bestselling Alice series (Alice, I Think; Miss Smithers; and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last). Her novel Republic of Dirt won the Leacock Medal in 2016. Susan Juby lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, James, and their dogs, who are convinced they could have lucrative careers as social media stars.
Kate Hilton is the bestselling author of three novels: The Hole in the Middle, Just like Family and Better Luck Next Time. When not writing, Kate works with psychotherapy and life coaching clients in the area of transformational change.
Elizabeth Renzetti is the author of the essay collection Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls and the novel Based on a True Story. In 2020, she won the Landsberg Award for her reporting on gender equality.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 19th at 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30).
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street
WHAT: Readings from the authors of Bury the Lead and A Meditation on Murder, followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

Book Launch: Gathering Colour, by Caitlin ffrench
2024-03-21 18:00 - 20:00 | Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC, V5T 0H2, Canada
Join us for the launch of Caitlin ffrench’s new book, Gathering Colour: Foraging Magic & Making Art from the World Around you.
Enjoy an author reading, book signing, and light refreshments. Book sales provided by Iron Dog Books.
WHEN: Thursday, March 21, 2024. 6:00–8:00 PM.
WHERE: Rennie Hall (Rm B2160), Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Transit accessible. Parking on-site.

Double Poetry Collection Launch: Patrick Grace and Tina Biello
2024-04-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launches of two new poetry collections by local authors!
Patrick Grace’s debut collection, Deviant, traces a trajectory of queer self-discovery from childhood to adulthood, examining love, fear, grief, and the violence that men are capable of in intimate same-sex relationships. Richly engaged with the tangible and experiential, Patrick Grace’s confessional poetry captures profound, sharp emotions, tracking a journey impacted equally by beauty and by brutality. Coming-of-age identity struggles are recalled with wry wit, and dreamlike poems embrace adolescent queer love and connections as a way to cope with the fear and cruelty that can occur in gay relationships. Later poems in the collection recall vivid moments of psychological trauma and stalking and explore the bias of the justice system toward gay men. Collecting memories, dreams, and fears about sexual identity, Deviant makes important contributions to queer coming-of-age and intimate partner violence narratives.
PATRICK GRACE is an author and teacher who divides his time between Vancouver and Victoria, BC. He has read at literary festivals around Canada, including Word Vancouver and Versefest Ottawa, and will be appearing at the Edmonton Poetry Festival in late April. He has published two chapbooks: a blurred wind swirls back for you (2023), and Dastardly (2021), exploring aspects of love, fear, and trauma that represent a personal queer identity. Deviant, his first full-length poetry collection, continues to explore these themes. He works as managing editor of Plenitude Magazine, and is this year’s judge for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry.
In Tina Biello’s new collection, The Weight of Survival, in a small logging town nestled near Lake Cowichan is an old elementary school. The child of immigrants from post-war Italy attends this school among the population of mostly white, anglo-saxon families. She does not speak English.
Her family is one of four who emigrated from southern Italy, to this small forested community. There are other families, from India, who share a kinship of ‘other’ with the Italian families. What happens when your voice, your food, your home is different? How do you know how to be queer when there is no language or place for it? How do you remember a time not spoken of, but passed on through the smell of walnut blossoms in the spring, grapes in the fall? In The Weight of Survival, Tina Biello chronicles this upbringing of otherness, of being shaped by two very different communities, of blending identities into one, and what is left behind in the process.
Poet, playwright and actor, TINA BIELLO was born in Lake Cowichan, a small logging town here on Vancouver Island to immigrant parents. She has honed her skills of being from ‘two places’ and speaks a few languages because of it. She believes in the power of poetry to reach in, grab hold and get us through. She had the great privilege of working with mentor Patrick Lane. ‘The Weight of Survival’ is her 4th book of poems. When she’s not writing poetry, she’s gardening, walking dogs and writing plays and more recently a screenplay. She was Nanaimo’s 2nd Poet Laureate from 2017-2020 and has just finished a 3 year cycle of writing librettos for composers with the Vancouver Island Symphony.
WHEN: Wednesday, April 3rd at 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30).
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street.
WHAT: Readings by Patrick Grace and Tina Biello, followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

Book Launch: Boxing the Compass by Michael L. Hadley
2024-04-05 15:30 - 17:00 | Maritime Museum of BC, 634 Humboldt St., Victoria, BC, Canada
Join award-winning historian and mariner Michael L. Hadley on his international adventures as he launches his memoir, Boxing the Compass: A Life of Seafaring, Music, and Pilgrimage (Heritage House, 2024).
Friday, April 5, 2024 | 3:30–5:00 pm
Maritime Museum of BC | 744 Douglas St. | Victoria, BC
Register at mmbc.bc.ca
Event included with museum admission or membership—come early to visit the museum
Books available for purchase and signing

The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose by Zehra Naqvi with guests
2024-04-12 18:00 | British Columbia
On Friday, April 12th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Penguin Random House Canada for the launch of The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose by Zehra Naqvi, joined by Rahat Kurd, Seemi Ghazi and Sarah Munawar.
For readers of Fatimah Asghar’s If They Come for Us, here is a searing, multidimensional debut about the search for language and self, which is life itself.
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. We are located in the former MING WO building, which is still the name on the facade of our building.
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:
The Knot of My Tongue (Penguin Random House, 2024)
I knew it was time to build what could carry, what could find the high point to name what I knew to be the world and carry it with me
At the heart of The Knot of My Tongue is Zehra Naqvi’s storying of language itself and the self-re- visioning that follows devastating personal rupture. Employing a variety of poetic forms, these intimate, searching poems address generations, continents, and dominions
to examine loss of expression in the aftermath of collisions with
powerful forces, ranging from histories to intimacies.
Naqvi follows a cast of characters from personal memory, family history, and Quranic traditions, at instances where they have either been rendered silent or found ways to attempt the inexpressible— a father struggling to speak as an immigrant in Canada; a grandmother as she loses her children and her home after the 1947 Partition; the Islamic story of Hajar, abandoned in the desert without water; the myth of Philomela who finds language even after her husband cuts off her tongue.
Brilliantly blending the personal and the communal, memory and myth, theology and tradition, the poems in this collection train our attention—slow and immediate, public and private—on our primal ability to communicate, recover, and survive. This example is striking for the power of its speaking through loss and a singular, radiant vision.
About the author
ZEHRA NAQVI is a Karachi-born writer raised on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, BC). She is a winner of the 2021 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers awarded by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Her poem “forgetting urdu” was the winner of Room’s 2016 Poetry Contest. Zehra has written and edited for various publications internationally. She holds two MSc degrees in migration studies and social anthropology from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. The Knot of My Tongue is her debut poetry collection.
About the guests
Rahat Kurd is the daughter & granddaughter of Kashmiri women. She has studied Urdu and Persian poetry for several years. Her work includes COSMOPHILIA (Talonbooks 2015), a collection of poems, and THE CITY THAT IS LEAVING FOREVER: KASHMIRI LETTERS (Talonbooks 2021), a hybrid book of correspondence and poetics co-authored with the Kashmiri poet Sumayya Syed.
Dr. Sarah Munawar (She/Her) is a Pakistani-Muslim and settler living in relationship with and sustained by the occupied and unceded land and waters of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (TsleilWaututh) Nations. She is a political science instructor at Columbia College, a mother and a scholar of care ethics, disability justice and health equity. In her writing, she articulates the right of Muslims to think about care islamically, and offers a vision of disability justice and collective accessibility that draws upon various lineages of anti-oppressive Islamic knowledge.

RCLAS presents Poetic Justice In Celebration of National Poetry Month Featuring Isabella Wang & Catherine Lewis with Alan Hill
2024-04-14 14:00 - 16:00 | #IHeartNewWest Community Art Space Columbia Square Plaza, Unit 103 – 78 10th Street, New Westminster., Unit 103 - 78 10th Street, New Westminster, BC, Canada
Royal City Literary Arts Society presents “Poetic Justice”
In Celebration of National Poetry Month
Sunday, April 14 from 2-4pm
Featuring poets Isabella Wang and Catherine Lewis with host Alan Hill.
Plus, additional readings from “A Poetry of Place: Journeys Across New Westminster”, the poetry postcard anthology project, curated and edited by Alan Hill, published in 2021 by the City of New Westminster.
Open Mic.
Located at the New West Artists exhibit at the
📍#IHeartNewWest Community Art Space Columbia Square Plaza, Downtown New West.
📌UNIT 103, 78 Tenth Street, New Westminster.
Catherine Lewis (she/her) is a Chinese Canadian writer and poet. Her debut poetry chapbook Zipless (845 Press) is a finalist for two Bisexual Book Awards, including Bi Writer of the Year. Her writing has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and published in The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, The Humber Literary Review, Pulp Literature, and Plenitude Magazine. A graduate of SFU’s Writer’s Studio, she is a two-time Banff Centre Literary Arts alumna. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, she lives in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
Isabella Wang is the author of the chapbook, On Forgetting a Language, and her full-length debut, Pebble Swing, shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Among other recognitions, she has been shortlisted for Arc’s Poem of the Year Contest, The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Contest and Long Poem Contest, and was the youngest writer to be shortlisted twice for The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Essay Contest. She is in her Masters of Sociology at SFU. An editor on the Room collective, she is also a youth mentor with Vancouver Poetry House, poetry mentor with the UBC Learning Exchange, web coordinator with poetry in canada, and directs her own non-profit editing and mentorship program, 4827 Revise Revision St.
Alan Hill was born in the UK and immigrated to Canada in 2005. He is the former Poet Laureate of the City of New Westminster, BC (2017-2020), former president of the Royal City Literary Arts Society (RCLAS), and was the editor and curator of A Poetry of Place: Journeys Across New Westminster, published in partnership with New Westminster Arts Services. His writing has been published internationally and his poetry has appeared in Event, CV2, Canadian Literature, The Antigonish Review, subTerrain, Poetry is Dead, among others. He works in the field of community development and immigrant settlement and lives in New Westminster, BC. His book In the Blood was published by Caitlin Press in 2022.

Book Launch: Kayla Czaga and Anne Fleming
2024-04-18 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launches of new books by two talented local writers!!
“I feel like the crud / I accidentally touch sometimes, whatever it is / that collects under cushions on my couch,” writes Kayla Czaga in her third collection, Midway, an exploration of grief in all its manifestations. In her search for meaning in the aftermath of her parents’ deaths, Czaga visits the underworld (at least twice), Vietnamese restaurants, the beach, London’s Tate Modern, Las Vegas casinos, and a fish textbook. Honest, elegiac, characteristically strange, and frequently funny, these poems take the reader through bright scenery like carnival rides with fast climbs and sudden drops. The meanings and messages Czaga uncovers on her travels are complicated: hopeful, bleak-both comforting and not. Along with the parents the poet mourns, this collection showcases a varied cast. A suburban father-in-law copes with a troubling diagnosis. Marge Simpson quits The Simpsons. Death is a metalhead who dates girls too young for him. Midway is a welcome and necessary collection from one of the most celebrated and accomplished poets of her generation.
KAYLA CZAGA is the author of two previous poetry collections-For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions, 2014), and Dunk Tank (House of Anansi, 2019). Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Frequently anthologized in the Best Canadian Poetry in English series, her writing also appears in The Walrus, Grain, Event, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people, the Songhees nd Esquimalt nations.
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Anne Fleming’s latest novel, Curiosities, opens with a present-day amateur historian, Anne, who describes her unexpected discovery of five seventeenth-century manuscripts that, astonishingly, tell the same strange story from vastly different points of view. And so it falls upon Anne, the contemporary historian, to piece together these interlocking stories, discover the fate of a pair of lovers, and add her own layer of “truth” to a history and time period when there were no labels for who these lovers might truly be.
ANNE FLEMING is the author of Pool-Hopping & Other Stories (Raincoast, 1998), which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Danuta Gleed Award, as well as the much-praised novel, Anomaly (Raincoast, 2005). She is also the author of a middle-grade novel, The Goat (Groundwood, 2017), which was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection, shortlisted for Italy’s Premio Strega, optioned for film, and named one of the Top Ten Children’s Books of the Year by The New York Public Library and the Wall Street Journal. Anne Fleming lives in Victoria, BC.
WHEN: Thursday, April 18th, 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30).
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government St.
WHAT: Readings of new work from Kayla Czaga and Anne Fleming followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings. Refreshments will be provided. The audience will also be serenaded by lute playing from Anne Fleming and local musician, Doug Hensley.
HOW: This event is free to attend.
