Read Local BC

Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir by Kawika Guillermo
2023-11-29 18:00 (America/Vancouver) | BC
On Wednesday, November 29th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Duke University Press Books in celebrating the launch of Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir by Kawika Guillermo, with guest David Chariandy.
Their discussion will focus on memoir, parenthood, and the possibilities of love within histories of violence. Guillermo will also bring his late wife Y-Dang Troeung’s red Chinese stamp to sign copies of her memoir Landbridge on her behalf, as she wished he do.
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:
Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir (Duke University Press Books, 2023)
In Nimrods, Kawika Guillermo chronicles the agonizing absurdities of being a newly minted professor (and overtired father) hired to teach in a Social Justice Institute while haunted by the inner ghosts of patriarchy, racial pessimism, and imperial arrogance. Charged with the “personal is political” mandate of feminist critique, Guillermo honestly and powerfully recounts his wayward path, from being raised by two preachers’ kids in a chaotic mixed-race family to his uncle’s death from HIV-related illness, which helped prompt his parents’ divorce and his mother’s move to Las Vegas, to his many attempts to flee from American gender, racial, and religious norms by immigrating to South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Canada. Through an often crass, cringey, and raw hybrid prose-poetic style, Guillermo reflects on anger, alcoholism, and suicidal ideation—traits that do not simply vanish after one is cast into the treacherous role of fatherhood or the dreaded role of professor. Guillermo’s shameless mixtures of autotheory, queer punk poetry, musical ekphrasis, haibun, academic (mis)quotations, and bad dad jokes present a bold new take on the autobiography: the fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir.
About the author:
Kawika Guillermo is a third generation Filipino American whose family is primarily from Hawai’i and Texas. He has lived in Portland, Las Vegas, Seattle, Gimhae South Korea, Nanjing China, Hong Kong, and Vancouver, Canada. His debut novel, Stamped: an anti-travel novel (2018), won the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Creative Prose, while his follow-up speculative fiction novel, All Flowers Bloom (2020), won the 2021 Reviewers Choice Gold Award for Best General Fiction/Novel. His first novel was recently adapted into the video game Stamped: an anti-travel game, released November 1st by Analgesic Productions.
About the guest reader:
David Chariandy is the author of Soucouyant, which was nominated for eleven literary awards, including the Governor General’s Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Brother, nominated for fourteen awards, winning the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Toronto Book Award. His most recent book is a memoir entitled I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter. David lives in Vancouver and teaches literature and creative writing at Simon Fraser University. In 2019, he received the Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction. In 2022, he was elected a fellow of the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada.
Also featuring discussion of:
Landbridge (Knopf Canada, 2023)
The inaugural title from Alchemy by Knopf Canada: A searing account by an exquisite writer who came to Canada as a baby, escaping war in Cambodia.
In 1980, Y-Dang Troeung and her family were among the last of the 60,000 refugees from Cambodia that then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau pledged to relocate to Canada. As the final arrivals, their landing was widely documented in newspapers, with photographs of the PM shaking Y-Dang’s father’s hand, reaching out to pat baby Y-Dang’s head. Forty years later, in her brilliant, astonishing book, Y-Dang returns to this moment, and to many others before and after, to explore the tension between that public narrative of happy “arrival,” and the multiple, often hidden truths of what happened to the people in her family.
In precise, beautiful prose accompanied by moving black-and-white visuals, Y-Dang weaves back and forth in time to tell stories about her parents and two brothers who lived through the Cambodian genocide, about the lives of her grandparents and extended family, about her own childhood in the refugee camps and in rural Ontario, and eventually about her young son’s illness and her own diagnosis with a terminal disease. Through it all, Y-Dang looks with bracing clarity at refugee existence, refusal of gratitude, becoming a scholar, and love.
About Landbridge’s author:
Y-Dang Troeung was Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, where she did research and taught in the fields of transnational Asian literatures, critical refugee studies, global south studies, and critical disability studies. She was also an Associate Editor of the journal Canadian Literature, and a 2020 Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Her recent publications can be found in Canadian Literature, Brick: A Literary Magazine, Amerasia Journal, and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Y-Dang passed away in November 2022, after completing the final draft of her extraordinary memoir, Landbridge. See also: http://www.y-dang.com/

An Afternoon With Authors Featuring Tellers of Tales and Poetic Justice
2023-11-26 13:00 - 17:00 | I Heart New West Community Art Space, Unit 103 - 78 10th Street, Columbia Square Plaza, New Westminster, British Columbia, V3M 1C4, Canada
Royal City Literary Arts Society presents An Afternoon With Authors
Featuring Tellers of Tales and Poetic Justice
Sunday November 26, 2023, 1pm to 5pm
Location:
I Heart New West
Community Art Space
Unit 103 – 78 10th Street
Columbia Square Plaza, New Westminster
Tellers of Tales – 1:00pm
• Winona Kent – The Jason Davey Mysteries: Ticket to Ride
• Jerena Tobiasen – The Nightingale and Sparrow Chronicles: Tsarina’s Crown.
• Ruth Kozak – Shadow of the Lion, Dragons in the Sky
• Una Bruhns – Apartheid
Poetic Justice – 3:00pm
• Herb Bryce – Seeds of Poetry
• Franci Louann – Portugal Calling
Music
• Catherine Booth
The Royal City Literary Arts Society presents an afternoon of fiction and poetry, with music, door prizes, a book market (signed books make wonderful Christmas gifts!), nibbles and an open mic. No admission charge. Free parking (the Community Art Space is across from Cockney Kings Fish & Chips in Columbia Square).

Horror in Seconds: Horror Poetry Night
2023-11-25 18:00 | BC
Join for a night of horror poetry and delicious horror-themed catering

Escape to Paris: History, Archives and the City of Light
2023-11-25 14:00 - 15:00 | Vancouver Island Regional Library, Sidney/North Saanich Branch, 10091 Resthaven Drive, Sidney, BC, V8L 3G3, Canada
Join local author and archivist Sonia Nicholson as she takes you to one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Following some of the locations featured in her novel, Provenance Unknown, travel from Victoria to Paris using local history and sense of place as a gateway for storytelling.
This casual talk will include an author reading and lots of opportunities for questions. Copies of the book will also be available for purchase, (cash or e-transfer).

Family Holiday Book Pop-Up & Reading!
2023-11-25 13:00 - 15:00 | Massy Arts, 23 East Pender, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
On Saturday, November 25th at 1pm, join Massy Arts and Massy Books at the Family Holiday Book Pop-Up & Reading, featuring childrens, middle-reader, and young adult fiction and non-fiction with authors Tanya Boteju, Jillian Christmas, Tony Correia, Hasan Namir, Emily Pohl-Weary, Holman Wang, and Andrea Warner. Plus, enjoy arts & crafts, story prompts, shopping, and book signings!

Tales for Late Night Bonfires by G.A. Grisenthwaite with host Molly Cross-Blanchard
2023-11-22 08:00 - 17:00 | BC
On Wednesday, December 6th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Freehand books in celebrating the launch of G.A. Grisenthwaite’s Tales for Late Night Bonfires, with host Molly Cross-Blanchard.
“Tales for Late Night Bonfires is funny, dark, and rich all at once; each story is immense and alive. Grisenthwaite shows us what fiction can be when story leads the way.” QUILL & QUIRE starred review
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:
Tales for Late Night Bonfires (Freehand Books, 2023)
These are stories that are a litle bit larger than life, or maybe they really happened. Tales that could be told ’round the campfire, each one-upping the next. Tales about a car that drives herself, ever loyal to her owner. Tales about an impossible moose hunt. Tales about the Real Santa(TM) mashed up with the book of Genesis, alongside SPAM stew and bedroom sets from IKEA.
G.A. Grisenthwaite’s writing is electric and inimitable, blending meticulous literary style with oral storytelling and coming away with a voice that is entirely his own. Tales for Late Night Bonfires is truly one of a kind, and not to be missed.
About the author:
G.A. Grisenthwaite is a Nlaka’pamux writer and a member of the Lytton First Nation. His debut novel, Home Waltz, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Grisenthwaite lives in Kingsville, Ontario. In 2023, he served two months as the Writer-in-Residence at Berton House, Dawson City.
About the host:
Molly Cross-Blanchard is a white and Métis writer and editor born on Treaty 3 territory (Fort Frances, ON), raised on Treaty 6 territory (Prince Albert, SK), and living on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, BC). She published her debut collection of poems, Exhibitionist, in 2021 with Coach House Books, and currently teaches Creative Writing and Indigenous Studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Dead Poets Reading Series - Nov. 19, 2023
2023-11-19 18:00 | BC
Join Massy Arts Society on Sunday, November 19th 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.
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.
Featured readers and poets include:
Phinder Dulai reading T.S. Eliot
Phinder Dulai is the Surrey-based author of dream/arteries (Talon Books) and two previous books of poetry: Ragas from the Periphery (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995) and Basmati Brown (Nightwood Editions, 2000). Phinder toured dream / arteries extensively across Canada and the USA. His work has appeared in Canadian Literature, Cue Books Anthology. Ankur, Matrix, Memewar Magazine, Rungh Magazine, the Capilano Review, Canadian Ethnic Studies, Toronto South Asian Review, subTerrain, and West Coast LINE. In 2017, he was the co-creater of Canada’s first writing residency for BIPOC writers called Centering Ourselves at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Currently he serves as the Poetry Editor for Canadian Literature Journal.
T.S. Eliot is highly distinguished as a poet, a literary critic, a dramatist, an editor, and a publisher. In 1910 and 1911, while still a college student, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in Poetry magazine, and other poems that are landmarks in the history of modern literature. Eliot’s most notable works include The Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943), and the play Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Eliot’s awards and honors include the British Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. His play The Cocktail Party won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. In 1964, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was famously adapted in 1981 into the musical Cats, which won seven Tony Awards.
Meredith Quartermain reading Douglas Barbour
Meredith Quartermain’s poetry books include Lullabies in the Real World, Vancouver Walking (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize) and Nightmarker (all from NeWest Press), and Matter and Recipes from the Red Planet (from Book*hug).
Douglas Barbour’s books of poetry include Visible Visions: Selected Poems, Story for a Saskatchewan Night, Fragmenting Body etc, Breath Takes, and Listen. If. He was a co-founder of NeWest Press in Edmonton, and was a professor of English at the University of Alberta. His critical work includes Worlds Out of Words: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany and monographs on John Newlove, Daphne Marlatt, bp Nichol and Michael Ondaatje. Barbour’s writing has been characterized as minimalist, aiming to create a landscape of sound equivalent to what his eye sees.
Peter Quartermain reading Maurice Scully
Peter Quartermain’s most recent book is Growing Dumb: My English Education. He is the author of two books of critical essays: Stubborn Poetries and Disjunctive Poetics. He edited the award-winning two-volume Collected Poems and Plays of Robert Duncan, and co-edited two other collections.
Maurice Scully was an Irish poet who lived in Dublin and was the author of more than a dozen books of poetry. His books include 5 Freedoms of Movement, Steps, Livelihood, Sonata, Doing the Same in English, Humming, Several Dances, and Things That Happen. Early in his writing life he edited Beau a literary magazine that featured an impressive range of writers from Ireland, Britain and the U.S. The magazine contributed to the emergence of experimental writers in Ireland. Things That Happen (2020) has been described critically as “the most ambitious and important long poem in modern Irish literature”.
Christopher Levenson reading Gerda Mayer
Christopher Levenson, born 1934 in London, England, has lived in Canada since 1968, first In Ottawa for 39 years where he taught English, Comparative Literature and poetry workshop courses at Carleton University, and co-founded and became first editor of Arc magazine.. In 2007 he moved to Vancouver where,. with Rob Taylor he helped re-start David Zieroth’s Dead Poets Reading Series. He has published fourteen books of poetry, most recently Moorings (Caitlin Press, 2023) and has translated from German and Dutch.
Gerda Mayer, a German-speaking Jew, was born in 1927 in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia. She came to England at age eleven in 1939 on one of the last Kindertransport trains. After two boarding schools during the war she worked in an office, met and married her husband, and studied at Bedford College, London, for a degree in English, German and Art History, after which she worked for a while for the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. Her first major poetic success was with Treble Poets 2 in1975 and was followed in 1991 by Bernini’s Cat, New and Selected Poems. She died in July 2021.
Fiona Lam reading Tin Lander
Tim Lander (26 February 1938 – 20 August 2023) Born in February of 1938 in Surrey, England, Tim Lander attended London University before moving to Canada in 1964. A penny whistle-playing itinerant ‘street poet’ and busker, he published over 50 handmade, hand-sewn chapbooks and 2 collections of poetry. Gentle, thoughtful and articulate, he remained an important presence on the West Coast poetry scene for decades, mostly based out of Nanaimo. In 2021, he moved to an assisted living facility and died on 20 August 2023, at the age of 85. (Reference: BC BookWorld Archives.)

Book Launch: Blue Camas, Blue Camas by Danielle S. Marcotte
2023-11-19 13:00 - 14:30 | Black Bond Books – Ladner, 5251 Ladner Trunk Road, Ladner, BC, V4K 1W4, Canada
Join local author Danielle S. Marcotte for the launch of her new picture book, Blue Camas, Blue Camas.
Sunday, November 19 | 1:00 pm
Black Bond Books – Ladner Village
Blue Camas, Blue Camas is the captivating story of how a flower that has been cultivated on Canada’s west coast since time immemorial came to symbolize the meeting of two contrasting ways of life and the perseverance of traditional knowledge against all odds.
https://www.heritagehouse.ca/book/blue-camas-blue-camas/
“Blue Camas, Blue Camas is a captivating story revealing the overlooked history of colonial contact and its impact on Indigenous communities. Through vivid storytelling and diverse voices, it emphasizes land stewardship, cultural heritage, and fostering empathy, making it a valuable resource for children.”
—SAMANTHA BEYNON, author of Oolichan Moon

Moonlight Piano and Arts Festival
2023-11-18 18:00 | BC
A family-friendly fantasy themed autumn event showcasing a slice of the wide and diverse local artistic talent in the city. Admire the magical artwork and listen to the soothing music of our singer-storyteller pianists. Located at the venerable Massy Art Gallery at 23 W Pender St, Vancouver, BC, it will be a pleasant, relaxing way to spend a Saturday evening.
This is a mask mandatory space and it is recommended you come in masked, but otherwise, they will be provided on site.
We gratefully acknowledge this event takes place on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh nations, who have been telling and preserving their stories since time immemorial, as well as its close proximity to historic Chinatown who several of our artists have close ties to.

Better Next Year: An Anthology of Christmas Epiphanies edited by JJ Lee
2023-11-16 18:00 | BC
On Thursday, November 16th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Tidewater Press in celebrating the launch of Better Next Year: An Anthology of Christmas Epiphanies, edited by JJ Lee. The evening will include light refreshments and readings from three contributors: JJ Lee, Sonja Larsen and Joanna Baxter.
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:
Better Next Year An Anthology of Christmas Epiphanies (Tidewater Press, 2023)
Christmas is trumpeted as a time of peace, joy, bounty and goodwill. Believers and non-believers alike covet the spirit of the holidays even when their circumstances are screwed up.
Recollections from acclaimed Canadian authors combine with emerging voices from across the country in an anthology that debunks the popular depiction of Christmas while delivering its messages of hope and renewal.
Writers of colour, immigrants, Indigenous authors, members of the queer and transgendered community and those marginalized by personal circumstance share memories of surviving bleak Christmases past: holidays spent in shelters, prisons or on the streets; families marred by alcohol and violence; personal struggles with addiction, poverty or grief; isolation and loneliness. Despite these and other obstacles, contributors strive to salvage the spirit of the season.
About the contributors:
JJ Lee’s debut book, The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit (McClelland & Stewart) was a finalist for the Hilary Weston, Charles Taylor, Hubert Evans and Governor General’s awards for Non-Fiction. For ten years, he was a contributor reporter, producer, and host for CBC Radio and now leads a Non-Fiction workshop at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University.
Sonja Larsen’s memoir Red Star Tattoo: My Life as a Girl Revolutionary (Random House Canada) won the 2017 Edna Staebler Non-Fiction award and was shortlisted for The Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Award. She lives in Vancouver, BC, where she is currently working on her second book about her experiences running a computer lab in an inner-city community centre.
Joanna Baxter co-founded and co-hosted a quarterly reading event and podcast called Spiel_Vancouver to support local emerging writers. She is currently working on a collection of short stories. Joanna lives with her husband and two teenagers on Vancouver’s North Shore.

Trans People and the Choreography of Reproductive Healthcare by A.J. Lowik
2023-11-15 18:00 | BC
On Wednesday, November 15th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Lexington Books in celebrating the launch of Trans People and the Choreography of Reproductive Healthcare: Dancing Outside the Lines, by A.J. Lowik with host Cora Beitel.
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 THIS BOOK
Reproductive healthcare is choreographically delivered—an intricate collection of seemingly disparate but deftly balanced elements all come together in a complex dance. It is choreographed in ways that presume that the person accessing it—the dancer-patient—will be, among other things, cisgender. As a result, trans people are altogether erased, systematically unanticipated, insufficiently accommodated, or understood only in relation to hegemonic, regulatory frameworks. Trans People and the Choreography of Reproductive Healthcare: Dancing Outside the Lines draws on data from a research study involving qualitative interviews and participatory photography with fourteen trans people from British Columbia, Canada. It uses dance as a metaphor to expose facets of the restrictive choreography of reproductive healthcare, and to document the improvisational tactics used by trans people in their pursuit of care that is competent, safe, and affirming.
“Dance and choreography are more than metaphors in A.J. Lowik’s fetching blend of social science and cultural studies. Those terms offer analytically apt descriptions of how reproductive healthcare provisions for trans people seeks to script the movements of providers and recipients alike in certain ways, while the individual participants find ways to move creatively within these structural constraints. In the end, Lowik calls upon us all to imagine new ways of moving together in ways that better serve our lives.” — Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution
–> Special 30% Discount Offer! To get discount, use code LXFANDF30 when ordering. https://rowman.com/Lexington
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A.J. Lowik is a researcher, instructor and consultant, whose work focuses on advancing trans-inclusive and gender-affirming reproductive healthcare, including menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, sterilization, fertility preservation and abortion. A.J. is the Vice-President of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, and a member of the B.C. Period Poverty Task Force. They are the author of Trans People and the Choreography of Reproductive Healthcare: Dancing Outside the Lines, and the co-editor of The Liminal Chrysalis: Imagining Reproduction and Parenting Futures Beyond the Binary. A.J. is a nonbinary, queer, feminist, who loves cats, jigsaw puzzles, board games, and knitting.
ABOUT THE HOST
Cora Beitel is a registered midwife, educator and community organizer working to increase access to reproductive health care for queer and trans families and undocumented people with precarious immigration status. A founder of the Strathcona Midwifery Collective, Cora has facilitated the Trans and Queer Pregnancy and Parenting (TQPP) group since 2015. In addition to their clinical practice, they currently work as a consultant focusing on inclusive pregnancy, birth and postpartum care for gender diverse people. Cora is non-binary and from Eastern European Jewish ancestry and a parent to three awesome kids. When not working, they’re with family and spend their free time knitting, canning, growing garlic and riding their bike.

Book Launch: Arleen Pare and Barbara Pelman
2023-11-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books for the launch of new books by two beloved local poets!
Award-winning poet Arleen Pare’s latest collection, Absence of Wings, is both an intimate family portrait and a public documentation of how we, as a society, can fail to protect our children.
Absence of Wings depicts the extraordinary and tragically foreshortened life of A.—Paré’s niece, Brazilian, adopted, racialized, and living with multiple mental health diagnoses. In her deft and clear poetics, accompanied by documentary pieces in the tradition of C.D. Wright’s One with Others, Paré is both witness to and emotionally engaged in the life and death of A. The result is deep and heart-felt, both factional and fictional, poetry and prose, holding its subject, A., heart-close and 3,000 miles away. Absence of Wings unfolds on many levels; it embraces the private and public spheres; it is as intimate as family, as worldly as the public and personal politics that surround each life. It both observes and embraces, always with the important question of the world’s unprotected children in mind.
In A Brief and Endless Sea, award-winning poet Barbara Pelman presents a life lived in poetry, delving into the small moments and spaces containing the greatest offerings of love, hope and possibility.
Born out of waiting out the lockdown during the early days of the pandemic, Barbara Pelman’s A Brief and Endless Sea explores a life in retrospect, beginning with a high school typing class and ending with the Angel Purah, cutting the ties that bind a soul to a body. Many of the poems in this collection are rooted in Jewish tradition: the prophet Isaiah’s words of comfort; the rabbinical story of the Lost Princess, that angel and her counterpart, the Angel Duma. Pelman takes us to difficult places—the dissolution of a marriage, caring for a parent with dementia. But she doesn’t leave us there, waiting. Using the power of words to map a route out, A Brief and Endless Sea pulls us toward life in all of its vibrant details—the simple beauty of a small garden of tomatoes and roses, the pleasures of teaching poetry, long walks with a grandson, and encounters with spirituality. For Pelman, there is comfort in the making of a poem and in the “smallest life you can love.” Like the glosa form she turns to often, something small transforms into something larger, expansive. In A Brief and Endless Sea, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and waiting in itself presents fertile ground for hope and possibility.
WHEN: Thursday, November 9th at 7PM (doors at 6:30)
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government St.
WHAT: A reading and Q&A with Arleen Pare and Barbara Pelman.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

A Dream Wants Waking by Lydia Kwa with host Carleigh Baker
2023-11-09 18:00 | BC
On Thursday, November 9th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Wolsak & Wynn in celebrating the launch of Lydia Kwa’s A Dream Wants Waking, with host Carleigh Baker.
“The melding of the technical with the mystical is masterfully done. This thrilling and innovative tale will have readers hooked.” — A Dream Wants Waking (Publishers Weekly, 15/08/2023)
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:
A Dream Wants Waking (Wolsak & Wynn Publishers Ltd, 2023)
In the mythical Luoyang of 2219 CE, a half-human half-fox spirit Yinhe has been asked to help liberate the chimeric creatures enslaved in labour in Dream Zone and Interstitium, two zones of the city where they have been confined. Will Yinhe be able to stop Gui the demon from wreaking destruction on the city and on humankind? This is a novel that interweaves different times and spaces; and speaks to the power of love to motivate discovery and liberation.
About the author:
Lydia Kwa has published two books of poetry (The Colours of Heroines, 1992; sinuous, 2013) and four novels (This Place Called Absence, 2000; The Walking Boy, 2005 and 2019; Pulse, 2010 and 2014; Oracle Bone, 2017). Her fifth novel A Dream Wants Waking is published by Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn in Fall 2023. A third book of poetry from time to new will be published by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2024.
She won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2018; and her novels have been nominated for several awards, including the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction.
About the host:
CARLEIGH BAKER is an author and teacher of Cree-Métis and European descent. Born and raised on Stó:lō territory, she currently lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwəta (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings (Anvil Press, 2017), won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Indigenous Voices Award for fiction. She is a co-editor of Carving Space, the Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology. Her new story collection, Last Woman, is forthcoming with McClelland & Stewart in spring 2024.

Under the Table Open Mic Series Ft. Sheniz Janmohamed
2023-11-07 18:00 | BC
On Tuesday, November 7th at 6pm PDT / 9pm EDT, join Massy Arts Society and a collective of brilliant poet organizers for Under The Table Open Mic Series, featuring Sheniz Janmohamed.
Zoom room and sign-up opens at 5:45 PDT / 8:45 EDT, show starts at 6pm PDT / 9pm EDT
(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.
Please join the zoom room with the same email you used on eventbrite. If you have any issues joining please email us at underthetablepoetry@gmail.com
About Under The Table:
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 Voices and Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture, Under the Table Open Mic Series will be on the first Tuesday of each month with some events in person at Massy Arts Society and others virtually on zoom.
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. It’s a space to witness and engage with the work of incredible artists, anywhere on their path of sharing their work–from the person who has never shared in front of an audience, to artists who have read or performed work many times. It’s a space where there’s room to be scared, and choose to be in community, share, and engage with others’ work. It’s a space where we don’t claim to know all the answers, but are willing to be in the messy, nuanced space of learning together. Come to “Under the Table” to laugh, cry, celebrate, sit in discomfort, feel understood, and be together.
This event has been made possible by Massy Voices, The Government of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted virtually via zoom. Automatic captioning will be turned on, we recognize automatic captioning is imperfect. We are working towards securing funding for CART to improve the quality of captioning. We ask anyone speaking or performing to provide a visual description for blind and low vision audience members. We also ask that people don’t message in the chat during poems, to increase accessibility for people using screen readers.
With Author & Featured Poet:
Sheniz Janmohamed was born and raised in Tkaronto with ancestral ties to Kenya and India. A poet, artist educator and nature artist, Sheniz is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph.
Sheniz has been performing her poetry for 15 years, including features at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Aga Khan Museum, and Vancouver Writers Fest to name a few. Her writing has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant and Canthius and she is a regular reviewer for Quill & Quire. She has three collections of poetry, published by Mawenzi House: Bleeding Light (2010), Firesmoke (2014) and Reminders on the Path (2021).
Her nature art has been featured across Turtle Island, including the National Arts Centre, MOCA and the Art Gallery of Mississauga.
A recipient of the Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming Creative Teaching Scholarship, Sheniz holds an Artist Educator Mentor certification from the Royal Conservatory. She visits dozens organizations and schools to offer performances, talks and workshops in poetry and nature art.
Sheniz served as the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (Winter/Spring 2022), and is currently working on her fourth book, a collection of hybrid essays about her grandmother’s garden in the highlands of Kenya.

Virtual Author Presentation: Johnnie Christmas
2023-11-07 09:00 - 10:00 | Zoom
Students in grades 5-7 are invited to join this virtual author presentation with the award-winning author/illustrator of Swim Team, Johnnie Christmas.
This splashy, contemporary middle-grade graphic novel follows young Bree as she faces her fear of swimming head on, while at the same time confronting the longstanding barriers of systemic racism set within the public pool system. Johnnie Christmas conveys an engaging story with courage, and heart and shows us the wave of change can start with the smallest ripple.
Mr. Christmas will talk about his graphic novel Swim Team and how it was created.
Registration required. Elementary school teachers can register to receive a Zoom link to attend the presentation with their class. Register online, email brownr@nvdpl.ca, or call 604-984-0286, ext. 8184.

Bottom Rail on Top by DM Bradford with Guests
2023-11-06 18:00 | BC
On Monday, November 6th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Brick Books in celebrating the launch of Bottom Rail on Top by DM Bradford with with Cecily Nicholson and Junie Désil, hosted by Mercedes Eng.
“Not a collection of poetry but the sound of an opening door. Not a book but a tree on the riverbank. Not a line but a kinetic archive. Not a text but a heart. Not a page but a scene of the author at sunrise. Not a day but the gathering of the senses. Not a moment but the heavy low of another place.” — Jordan Abel, author of Open Spaces, Injun and NISHGA
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:
Bottom Rail on Top (Brick Books, 2023)
A rolling call and response between antebellum Black history and the present that mediates it.
Somewhere in the cut between Harriet Jacobs and surveillance, Southampton and sneaker game, Lake Providence and the supply chain, Bottom Rail on Top sets off a mediation between the complications of legacy and selfhood. In a kind of archives-powered unmooring of the linear progress story, award-winning poet D.M. Bradford fragments and recomposes American histories of antebellum Black life and emancipation, and stages the action in tandem with the matter of his own life. Amidst echoes and complicities, roots and flights, lineage and mastery, it’s a story of stories told in knots and asides, held together with paper trails, curiosities, and hooks — a study that doesn’t end.
About the author & guests:
Darby Minott Bradford is a poet and translator based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). They are the author of Dream of No One but Myself (Brick Books, 2021), which won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, was longlisted for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, and was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards, and Gerard Lampert Memorial Award. House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson, Bradford’s first translation, was published in 2023 by Brick Books. Bottom Rail on Top is their second book.
Cecily Nicholson is the author of four books and a past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. She is an Assistant Professor in Poetry at the School of Creative Writing, UBC and will be the 2024/2025 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley. Cecily volunteers with community impacted by food insecurity and her most recent book HARROWINGS considers Black rurality, agriculture, and art history.
Junie Désil is a poet. Born of immigrant (Haitian) parents on the Traditional Territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka in the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Junie’s debut poetry collection Eat Salt|Gaze at the Ocean (TalonBooks, 2020) was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Junie currently lives on the traditional territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin and Klahoose where she is currently working on a novel and a poetry manuscript.
Mercedes Eng is the author of Mercenary English, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, winner of the BC Poetry Prize, and my yt mama. Her writing has appeared in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Jacket 2, Asian American Literary Review, The Abolitionist, r/ally (No One Is Illegal), and Survaillance (Press Release). Mercedes is at work on a women’s prison anthology as a 2023 SFU Shadbolt Fellow.

Your Body Is a Revolution by Tara Teng
2023-11-04 14:00 - 17:00 | BC
On Saturday, November 4th at 2pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Dundurn Press in celebrating Tara Teng’s Your Body is a Revolution: Healing Our Relationships with Our Bodies, Each Other and the Earth.
Tara will be joined by guests (to be announced) and the event will feature some gentle forms of movement in the gallery space.
“Highly recommended to anybody searching to decolonize their life through embodiment. A must-read to gain the insight and inspiration that’s needed in today’s world. Having hard conversations is something we need to move forward in a good way as a collective of human beings on Mother Earth.” — Dakota Bear, Indigenous rights activist, and cofounder of Decolonial Clothing
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:
Your Body is a Revolution: Healing Our Relationships with Our Bodies, Each Other and the Earth (Dundurn Press, 2023)
It’s time to fully inhabit our lives, to reclaim what has been stolen from us, and to embrace the wisdom our bodies long to share.
Too many of us are living disconnected from our bodies, chasing a constantly moving target of ideal, and accepting the societal narrative about which bodies are deserving of safety and protection. In an effort to keep ourselves safe, we shame, push aside, and assimilate parts of ourselves that don’t align with the cultural norm. In turn, we are disconnected from our bodies and therefore from our humanity, losing sight of the true nature of who we are.
Embodiment coach Tara Teng helps us untangle ourselves from centuries of body-based oppression built into our societal systems or masquerading as religion. When we embrace our relationship with our bodies, we come into alignment with all things: ourselves, each other, the earth, and our spirituality. When we embrace ourselves, we can take back what society says is too much — too loud, too feminine, too masculine, too gay, too worldly, too unique. Now is the time to journey back to our bodies and to celebrate our whole selves.
About the author:
Tara Teng (she/her) is an Embodiment Coach who works in the intersections of spirituality and sexuality. She helps people find their way back to their bodies, overcome shame, heal trauma and dismantle purity culture in a way that is in alignment with their values and beliefs so that they can build a healthy, sexual ethic and thrive in freedom and wholeness.
Aside from her 1:1 coaching, Tara hosts women’s circles, workshops, online classes and retreats on the topics of embodiment, justice, sexuality, and relationships. Her debut book, Your Body is a Revolution: Healing Our Relationships with Our Bodies, Each Other and the Earth was published June 2023 from Broadleaf Books and Dundurn Press and is available in print, e-book and audiobook everywhere books are sold.

Double Lives & Lovely Afternoons: Kevin Chong & Patti Flather with Marcus Youssef & Christine Quintana
2023-11-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Massy Arts, 23 East Pender, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
On Thursday, November 2nd at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, Simon & Schuster, and Inanna Publications for ‘Double Lives & Lovely Afternoons: Kevin Chong & Patti Flather with Marcus Youssef and Christine Quintana’.
The Double Life of Bensen Yu was just shortlisted for a Scotiabank Giller Prize and Kevin Chong will be joining this event remotely from the Maritimes.
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 Double Life of Benson Yu (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
This fresh and unique work of metafiction follows a graphic novelist losing control of his own narrative as he attempts to write a polished retelling of his fraught upbringing in 1980s Chinatown.
In a Chinatown housing project lives twelve-year-old Benny, his ailing grandmother, and his strange neighbor Constantine, a man who believes he’s a reincarnated medieval samurai. When his grandmother is hospitalized, Benny manages to survive on his own until a social worker comes snooping. With no other family, he is reluctantly taken in by Constantine and soon, an unlikely bond forms between the two.
At least, that’s what Yu, the narrator of the story, wants to write.
The creator of a bestselling comic book, Yu is struggling with continuing the poignant tale of Benny and Constantine and can’t help but interject from the present day, slowly revealing a darker backstory. Can Yu confront the demons he’s spent his adult life avoiding or risk his own life…and Benny’s?
Such A Lovely Afternoon (Inanna Publications, 2022)
Such a Lovely Afternoon is a dazzling debut collection from award-winning Yukon writer Patti Flather.
A feisty young tomboy grapples with gender roles with sometimes hilarious results, a refugee single dad struggles for dignity in his northern community, and a malfunctioning compost toilet and wacky neighbours upturn a woman’s island cabin life, among other tales.
Against vivid landscapes from Canada’s West Coast to Hong Kong to the Yukon, Flather reveals poignant beauty, compassion and humour in everyday lives, with characters searching for identity and belonging, delving into their resilience and humanity. Published by Inanna Publications.
“Fall into Such a Lovely Afternoon in the middle of the night. These take-no-prisoners, let-your-hair-down stories are a heart-to-heart with your BFF about love, loss, and the lives of women making themselves up in the late 20th century, choice by choice, at the edge of the world. Patti Flather’s stories are literary lightning.” – Linda Svendsen, Guggenheim winner and author of Marine Life and Sussex Drive
About the authors:
Kevin Chong is the author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the new novel The Double Life of Benson Yu. Those titles have been named books of the year by Globe and Mail, National Post, and Amazon.ca, listed for a CBC prize, a BC Book Prize, and a National Magazine Award, optioned for film and TV, and published in the US, Europe, and Australia. His creative nonfiction and journalism have recently appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Rumpus, and the South China Morning Post. An Associate Professor at the UBC Okanagan, he lives in Vancouver with his family.
Patti Flather is an award-winning author. Her plays Paradise and Sixty Below have been shared on stages across Canada and published. Where the River Meets the Sea won the Canadian National Playwriting Competition, her radio play West Edmonton Mall was nominated for a Canadian Screenwriting Award, and her stories have appeared in literary magazines. A winner of the Borealis Prize for Yukon literary contribution, Patti has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of BC. She grew up in North Vancouver, BC, and lives in Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än territory in Whitehorse, Yukon. www.pattiflather.com
About the guests:
Marcus Youssef’s fifteen or so plays all investigate some aspect of difference and belonging. They have been produced in multiple languages in in twenty countries across North America, Europe and Asia, from Seattle to New York to Reykjavik, London, Venice, Hong Kong, Vienna, Athens, Frankfurt and Berlin. He is the recipient of Canada’s largest theatre award, the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, for his body of work as a playwright, as well as Berlin, Germany’s Ikarus Prize, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Chalmers’ Canadian Play Award, the Seattle Times Footlight award, the Vancouver Critics’ Innovation award (three times) and the Canada Council Staunch-Lynton Award.
Christine Quintana Born in Los Angeles to a Mexican-American father and a Dutch-British-Canadian mother, Christine is now a grateful visitor to the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Christine is an actor, playwright, co-Artistic Producer of Delinquent Theatre, and artistic associate of Neworld Theatre. Winner of a LA Drama Critic’s Circle Award, Dora Mavor Moore Award, Jessie Richardson Theatre Award, Tom Hendry Award, a Governor General’s Award nomination, and the Siminovitch Protégée Prize for Playwriting, Christine’s works have been translated and performed in Spanish, French, German, and ASL. As a performer, she’s acted on stages big and small, in a camper van, in neighbourhoods across East Vancouver, and on a farm. She is currently working on a commission for the Manhattan Theatre Club, and will premiere 4 new works next year across Canada. She is a graduate of UBC’s BFA Acting Program. christinequintana.ca

Double Lives & Lovely Afternoons: Kevin Chong & Patti Flather with Guests
2023-11-02 18:00 - 18:30 | BC

Book Signing with Darrel J. McLeod
2023-11-02 12:30 - 14:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books for a book signing with beloved local author, Darrel J. McLeod!!
Darrel J. McLeod will be in-store to sign copies of his debut novel, A Season in Chezgh’un.
A subversive novel by acclaimed Cree author Darrel J. McLeod, infused with the contradictory triumph and pain of finding conventional success in a world that feels alien.
James, a talented and conflicted Cree man from a tiny settlement in Northern Alberta, has settled into a comfortable middle-class life in Kitsilano, a trendy neighbourhood of Vancouver. He is living the life he had once dreamed of—travel, a charming circle of sophisticated friends, a promising career and a loving relationship with a caring man—but he chafes at being assimilated into mainstream society, removed from his people and culture.
The untimely death of James’s mother, his only link to his extended family and community, propels him into a quest to reconnect with his roots. He secures a job as a principal in a remote northern Dakelh community but quickly learns that life there isn’t the fix he’d hoped it would be: His encounters with poverty, cultural disruption and abuse conjure ghosts from his past that drive him toward self-destruction. During the single year he spends in northern BC, James takes solace in the richness of the Dakelh culture—the indomitable spirit of the people, and the splendour of nature—all the while fighting to keep his dark side from destroying his life.
WHEN: Thursday, November 2nd from 12:30-2:00 PM.
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street.
WHAT: A book signing of A Season in Chezgh’un with Darrel J. McLeod.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

Ali Blythe and Jason Jobin Book Launch
2023-11-01 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books in celebrating new books by two local authors: Ali Blythe and Jason Jobin!
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —
Breaking open John Keats’s “Last Sonnet,” in his third book of poetry, Stedfast, Ali Blythe writes marginality into the canon, at once claiming, reviving, and un-fixing the Romantic vision.
Taking place over one night, the poet in bed next to a sleeping lover, Blythe’s revelatory poems struggle with questions of illusion and reality, immersion and escapism, that which endures and that which is transient. Held taut in formal quivers of short lines, each poem is shot through with eros — to address, to dress and undress, the subject of the love poem and perhaps love itself.
Jason Jobin’s debut, The Wild Mandrake, is a memoir that covers his life from the cusp of adulthood, as he faces cancer that keeps coming back.
Doctors used to tell him he was cured. That was a long time ago. Ever since he first left home at age nineteen, writer Jason Jobin has had cancer. Every five years, like clockwork, it relapses, and yet he always pulls through, surrounded by friends and family but isolated by illness. Chemotherapy, surgeries, radiation — these persist, but they aren’t the milestones of his life. They can’t be, he won’t let them be.
From helicoptering into the Yukon backcountry to teaching in an elite writing program, Jason strives to enter adulthood with some normalcy, but his is the life of “a special case.” And he does live. He lives working at a deli for minimum wage as his students come down the hill to shop and ask what he’s doing there. He lives measuring out nausea pills and benzos while his roommates drink and smoke and party. He lives lying to girlfriends about past diagnoses because what can you say? What do you build on rubble? He lives high and low and in between. Again he is sick, again he is cured. It’s miraculous. A great gift. But never enough.
Told in short glimpses, this story redefines what it means to survive. Jobin brings together the illuminated moments of loss and joy as he navigates chronic illness and builds from it something new and wildly unexpected.
WHEN: Wednesday, November 1st at 7:00 PM (doors at 6:30).
WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government St.
WHAT: A reading and signings by Ali Blythe and Jason Jobin.
HOW: This event is free to attend.

Children’s Graphic Novel Writing & Illustration Festival
2023-10-28 - 2023-10-30 | Eighth & Eight Creative Spaces (Massey Theatre), 735 Eighth Avenue, New Westminster, BC, V3M 2R2, Canada
Do you know any children who aspire to create their own illustrated characters and bring them to life through a comic or graphic novel?
Join award-winning and Emmy nominated animation director, and acclaimed author and illustrator Jeff Chiba Stearns as he shows students aged six to twelve fun and innovative ways to tell stories through the creation of their own graphic novel!
Each workshop registration includes a ticket to a performance of Dog Man: The Musical following the workshop! This hilarious production based on the worldwide bestselling graphic novel series by Dav Pilkey!

Dream House by Cathy Stonehouse with Guests
2023-10-27 18:00 | BC
On Friday, October 27th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Nightwood Editions for the launch of Cathy Stonehouse’s Dream House with guests. Cathy will be joined by special guest readers Renée Saklikar and Nina Mosall with host Nicola Harwood.
“Cathy Stonehouse’s Dream House, like any magical dwelling, is not what it at first appears to be. Walk inside. Explore its rooms. It is larger and more expansive than you might think. Also stranger, more peculiar, idiosyncratic. It is a metaverse of possibilities, the locus where what is lived intersects with what is imagined. As Stonehouse herself puts it, ‘The house is a cocoon, an open coffin. It is full of weather, and changes / every time you dare to look.’ Open the door. Close your eyes. The operative word is not house but dream. Look around. You are already there.” –Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995–2020
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:
Dream House (Nightwood Editions, 2023)
A long poem in six sections, Dream House takes its cue from Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space in its investigation of female embodiment by calling up such feral, liminal spaces as the pregnant body, the aging mind, snail shells, broom closets, low-ceilinged pubs and abandoned pizza boxes. Part Tardis, part townhouse, part Howl’s moving castle, this wry, surreal and many-peopled narrative interrogates what metaphor might hold of history, both personal and social, in the wake of a mother’s passing. Its migrant speaker trawls through hedgerows and recipe books to unearth stained birdsong and undead civil wars, intent on tracing a matrilineal path across four generations while traversing the haunted margins between existence and belonging.
About the author:
CATHY STONEHOUSE (she/they) is a poet, writer, teacher and visual artist in Vancouver, BC. The author of a novel, The Causes, a collection of short fiction, Something About the Animal, and two previous collections of poetry—Grace Shiver and The Words I Know. Stonehouse co-edited the ground-breaking anthology Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood and is a former editor of EVENT magazine. They teach creative writing and interdisciplinary expressive arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
About the guest readers & host:
Renée Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. The latest volume of her epic fantasy in verse, Bramah’s Quest, was released in August 2023 (Nightwood Editions). She was poet laureate for the City of Surrey 2015–2018 and volunteers for Event Magazine, Meet the Presses, Surrey International Writers Conference, and Poetry in Canada. Renée teaches creative writing and editing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and hosts Lunch Poems at SFU.
Nina Mosall (bio coming soon)
Nicola Harwood (she/they) is a queer writer and interdisciplinary artist. Her plays, performances and installation projects have been produced in Canada, Europe and the US. Nicola often works in collaboration with other artists and she has facilitated many art, writing and theatre projects with youth and community members. Recent installation projects include Summoning, No Words, an interactive sound installation built out of the female voice and High Muck-a-Muck: Playing Chinese (2014) an artist / programmer collaboration which won the 2015 UK New Media Writing Prize. Her memoir about queer family, Flight Instructions for the Commitment Impaired, was published by Caitlin Press in 2016. She is grateful to live and love on the ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations also known as Vancouver, Canada. Nicola teaches Creative Writing and Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. www.nicolaharwood.com

Book Signing with Ken McGoogan
2023-10-27 15:00 - 16:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Please join Munro’s Books for a book signing with award-winning, globe-trotting, history-hunting storyteller, Ken McGoogan!
In his latest book, Searing for Franklin: New Light on the Great Arctic Mystery, arctic historian Ken McGoogan approaches the legacy of nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin from a contemporary perspective and offers a surprising new explanation of an enduring Northern mystery.
Two of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin’s expeditions were monumental failures—the last one leading to more than a hundred deaths, including his own. Yet many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discover the Northwest Passage.
This book, McGoogan’s sixth about Arctic exploration, challenges that vision. It rejects old orthodoxies, incorporates the latest discoveries, and interweaves two main narratives. The first treats the Royal Navy’s Arctic Overland Expedition of 1819, a harbinger-misadventure during which Franklin rejected the advice of Dene and Métis leaders and lost eleven of his twenty-one men to exhaustion, starvation and murder. The second discovers a startling new answer to that greatest of Arctic mysteries: what was the root cause of the catastrophe that engulfed Franklin’s last expedition?
The well-preserved wrecks of Erebus and Terror—located in 2014 and 2016—promise to yield more clues about what cost the lives of the expedition members, some of whom were reduced to cannibalism. Contemporary researchers, rejecting theories of lead poisoning and botulism, continue to seek conclusive evidence both underwater and on land.
Drawing on his own research and Inuit oral accounts, McGoogan teases out many intriguing aspects of Franklin’s expeditions, including the explorer’s lethal hubris in ignoring the expert advice of the Dene leader Akaitcho. Franklin disappeared into the Arctic in 1845, yet people remain fascinated with his final doomed voyage: what happened? McGoogan will captivate readers with his first-hand account of travelling to relevant locations, visiting the graves of dead sailors and experiencing the Arctic—one of the most dramatic and challenging landscapes on the planet.

Tula ng Tiyanak
2023-10-26 18:00 | BC
👻Kapal Kollective presents: Tula ng Tiyanak – Open-mic Poetry👻
*Tula ng Tiyanak (“The poetry of a baby goblin) refers to a tiyanak with various origin stories from what is now known as the Philippines. The tiyanak in this graphic was illustrated by Viv.
Kikiligin, kikilabutan, at kakabahan ang mga totoong tiyanak sa Vancouver! (The true tiyanak in Vancouver will be thrilled, terrified, and tense!) Bring your creepiest, gut-wrenching, mysterious, shocking poetry on October 26 at Massy Arts Gallery for an open mic poetry featuring Pinxy and Pinay peeps.
Huwag kang magpahuli (don’t delay) — perk your ears up, grab your garlic and salt, and moisten your throat to scream in delight for the Tula ng Tiyanak.
🕷️Themes of poetry could include: ghostly encounters, scary, grief, death, social horror, mystical, mythical, creepy. The poems could be serious or comedic, or anything else. We will ask poets to provide content warning, and please take care of yourself when you’re onsite.
🥚Potluck: Please bring a snack to share if you’d like! We will let you know a week ahead if there are dietary considerations to be mindful of. Please bring your own water bottle.
🕯️Sign up to read your poetry:
We are making this space specifically for Pinxy and Pinay. Pinxy is a term referring to non-binary and gender non-conforming people who are from or have roots from the Philippines, and Pinay is a term referring to women who are from or have roots from the Philippines.
Choose your own adventure:
✨1. Sign up to perform ahead of time (up to five can sign up): https://forms.gle/BHDoYYDXch4grtbn9
✨2. Sign up onsite – Five spots will be available – please register here on Eventbrite as a regular guest if you plan to sign up as performer onsite.
You can read anything as long as it’s your work! What can you do in five minutes? We are rooting for you. Poetry can be in any language from the Philippines or English.
Please make sure to include content warning for our audience or inform any of the organizers prior to your set time.
😈Evil-est Laugh Contest:
Do you have the most evil and scariest HALAKHAK (cackle)? Warm up your vocal chords and practice in front of the mirror – there will be prizes!
🎃Accessibility:
To take care of each other’s health considerations, please wear a mask. Masks and sanitizers will be provided onsite.
Massy Arts Gallery is transit-friendly. Please check out their accessibility guidelines: https://massyarts.com/accessibility/.
👻Organizers: This event is organized by Kapal Kollective, where the power of poetry meets community, led by the creative spirits of Pinxy and Pinay people – April, Justinne, and Phebe. We have the support of the National Pilipino Canadian Cultural Centre and Massy Arts Society.
This event will take place on the unceded, stolen, and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations who have resisted against colonization and have stewarded the lands since time immemorial. As Pinxy/Pinay folks who are here as settler immigrants, migrants, and refugees, we are in solidarity with Indigenous folks in resisting against white supremacy, capitalism, and colonization. This poetry night is intended to keep our hopes up, and to be with community despite the destruction around us.

Storied: World-building with Rachel Hartman and Janice Lynn Mather
2023-10-25 19:00 - 20:00 | BC
Join the BC and Yukon Book Prizes for Storied: Discussions on Books, Publishing, and the Creative Process.
On Wednesday, October 25th, Rachel Hartman and Janice Lynn Mather will be offering mini-lectures on world-building. Rachel Hartman’s book In the Serpent’s Wake is the winner of the 2023 Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize. Janice Lynn Mather’s book Uncertain Kin is a finalist for the 2023 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
The event begins at 7 pm (PT). It will run for an hour.
This is a free event, but registration is required.
Funding for the Storied Series is thanks to Canada Book Fund, Creative BC, the Government of BC and the Canada Council for the Arts.
About the guests:
Rachel Hartman was born in Kentucky, but has lived a variety of places including Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, England, and Japan. She has a BA in Comparative Literature, although she insists it should have been a BS because her undergraduate thesis was called “Paradox and Parody in Don Quixote and the satires of Lucian.” She eschewed graduate school in favor of drawing comic books. She now lives in Vancouver, BC, with her family, their whippet, and a talking frog and salamander.
Rachel Hartman is the recipient of the 2013 William C. Morris YA Debut Award which honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrating impressive new voices in young adult literature.
Janice Lynn Mather is the author of two acclaimed novels for young adults: Learning to Breathe, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and Facing the Sun, which won the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award. She lives in Vancouver. Uncertain Kin is her adult debut.

Mona Awad and Lauren Groff in Conversation with Kathryn Marlow
2023-10-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Dave Dunnet Theatre 2121 Cadboro Bay Road, Victoria, 2121 Cadboro Bay Road, Victoria, British Columbia, V8R 5G4, Canada
Join Munro’s Books in celebrating the release of two highly anticipated new novels by critically acclaimed writers Mona Awad and Lauren Groff, in conversation with CBC Radio’s Kathryn Marlow!!
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes Mona Awad’s Rouge, a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother’s unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother’s fate—and find a connection that is more than skin deep?
Lauren Groff’s new novel, The Vaster Wilds, is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.
WHEN: Saturday, October 21st, at 7PM (doors at 6:30)
WHERE: Dave Dunnet Theatre, Oak Bay High School, 2121 Cadboro Bay Rd
WHAT: A celebration of new releases by Mona Awad and Lauren Groff, in conversation with CBC Radio’s Kathryn Marlow.
HOW: Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at https://awadgroff.eventbrite.ca

Tauhou by Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall
2023-10-20 18:00 | BC
On Friday, October 20th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and House of Anansi Press in welcoming Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall to celebrate her innovative novel Tauhou. Kōtuku will be joined by moderator Shirarose Wilensky.
“…Masterful dialogue and rich scenes move emotions like the currents around Aotearoa and the Salish Seas, a beautiful display of lyricism that loudly proclaims that Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall belongs in the crescendo of rising voices in CanLit. Tauhou is not a collection to miss!” — jaye simpson, author of it was never going to be okay
“The stories in this collection move like the waves of the ocean that divide Vancouver Island and Aotearoa. Once you emerge from Tauhou’s narrative depths, you’ll miss its imagination, its rhythms, its heart.” — Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
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:
Tauhou (House of Anansi Press, 2023)
An inventive exploration of Indigenous families, womanhood, and alternate post-colonial realities by a writer of Māori and Coast Salish descent.
Tauhou envisions a shared past between two Indigenous cultures, set on reimagined versions of Vancouver Island and Aotearoa that sit side by side in the ocean. Each chapter in this innovative hybrid novel is a fable, an autobiographical memory, a poem. A monster guards cultural objects in a museum, a woman uncovers her own grave, another woman remembers her estranged father. On rainforest beaches and grassy dunes, sisters and cousins contend with the ghosts of the past — all the way back to when the first foreign ships arrived on their shores.
In a testament to the resilience of Indigenous women, the two sides of this family, Coast Salish and Māori, must work together in understanding and forgiveness to heal that which has been forced upon them by colonialism. Tauhou is an ardent search for answers, for ways to live with truth. It is a longing for home, to return to the land and sea.
About the author
KŌTUKU TITIHUIA NUTTALL (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, W̱SÁNEĆ) holds an MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters. She won the 2020 Adam Foundation Prize and was runner-up in the 2021 Surrey Hotel-Newsroom writer’s residency award. She lives on the Kāpiti Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand.
About the moderator
Shirarose Wilensky is an editor at House of Anansi Press, where she specializes in literary upmarket fiction and narrative non-fiction by BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, and emerging writers. A winner of the Editors Canada Tom Fairley Award, she attended Simon Fraser University’s Master of Publishing Program and has worked for Arsenal Pulp Press, Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre, and Harbour Publishing. She lives in Port Moody, BC.
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This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

56. Carving Space (VFW)
2023-10-20 13:00 - 17:00 | Revue Stage
At the Vancouver Writers Festival
Established in 2017, the Indigenous Voices Awards honour the sovereignty of Indigenous creative voices and nurture the work of emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. The awards have ushered in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers, with past recipients including Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. This anthology, celebrating the awards’ fifth anniversary, collects selected works by finalists over the past five years.
We welcome co-editor Carleigh Baker and three contributors to the anthology, and former finalists of the Awards: Nathan Adler, Troy Sebastian, and jaye simpson. They’ll share readings from their works and discuss the writers they admire, what it’s felt like to have their own writing careers burgeon, and the exceptional breadth and depth in modern Indigenous writing.
Presented in partnership with SFU Library

42. It Stops Here: Rueben George in Conversation (VWF)
2023-10-19 18:00 | Waterfront Theatre, 1412 Cartwright St., Vancouver, BC, V6H 3R8, Canada
At the Vancouver Writers Festival
Rueben George is Sun Dance Chief, a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN), and manager of the TWN’s Sacred Trust initiative to protect the unceded Tsleil-Waututh lands and waters from the proposed Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion.
In his new memoir, he shares the story of the spiritual, cultural, and political resurgence of a nation taking action to reclaim their lands, waters, law, and food systems in the face of colonization. It Stops Here reveals extraordinary insights and revelations from someone who has devoted more than a decade of his life to fighting the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. He speaks with Michelle Cyca, the editor of Indigenous-led conservation coverage for The Narwhal.
Presented in partnership with Talking Stick Festival
