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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230905T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230905T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230830T190155Z
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SUMMARY:ELIXIR OF LIFE—Free Verse Poetry: A workshop with Tawhida Tanya Evanson
DESCRIPTION:Time: Tuesday\, September 5\, 2023 | 6-8pm \nLocation: Grand Luxe Hall\, Western Front (303 East 8th Avenue\, Vancouver) \nRegistration: $25 CAD* / Free for Indigenous participants \nWorkshop Description:\nThe human being is both stream and tsunami\, yet we have difficulty flowing around obstacles. Engage with a free verse poetry that taps into the conscious and subconscious using a basic unifying substance as our guide: water. We will use text\, videopoetry and tonal sound therapy to contemplate\, meditate\, write\, edit\, experiment\, question\, share\, give and receive feedback\, co-create safe space and predict the future of humankind. \nThere are a total of 15 in-person workshop spaces available. Participants should bring along a pen or pencil and some paper for the writing exercises. \nIndigenous registrants: Please email us at contact@thecapilanoreview.com to register directly. \nNo one will be turned away for lack of funds. If the registration fee presents a barrier to you\, please contact us at contact@thecapilanoreview.com. \n*Workshop registration includes a complimentary one-year print subscription to The Capilano Review.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/elixir-of-life-free-verse-poetry-a-workshop-with-tawhida-tanya-evanson/
LOCATION:The Western Front\, 303 East 8th Avenue\, Vancouver\, British Columbia\, V5T 1S1\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Workshop
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ORGANIZER;CN="The Capilano Review":MAILTO:contact@thecapilanoreview.com
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230905T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230905T180000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230823T220745Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230823T220745Z
UID:18081-1693936800-1693936800@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Under the Table Masks4EastVan Fundraiser Ft. Jane Shi & Kay Kassirer
DESCRIPTION:On Tuesday\, Sept 5th at 6pm PDT\, join Massy Arts Society and a collective of brilliant poet organizers for Under The Table Masks4EastVan Fundraiser featuring Jane Shi & Kay Kassirer. \nThere is a suggested donation of $10 to support Masks4EastVan\, but this event is PWYC. \nDoors and sign-up at 5:45\, show starts at 6 \n(we run on crip time with the understanding that bodies and brains aren’t always on schedule) \nWe 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 month’s open mic will only have 5 spots to leave time for our wonderful DOUBLE FEATURE! \nIf you’re signing up for the open mic\, when possible please come with a physical or electronic copy of the poem that can be shared with the ASL interpreters\, to provide better access for d/Deaf & hard of hearing audiences. \nWe will have books for sale by our feature artists and organizers with all proceeds going to Masks4EastVan. Grab a copy of A Whore’s Manifesto\, Leaving Chang’e on Read\, and HIR: an LGBTQIA+ South Asian Zine. \nUnder 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. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nMassy 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. \nASL interpretation is confirmed for the event. Please note that there may be some hiccups in interpretation for poems they are not able to read beforehand. 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 patricia@massybooks.com or underthetablepoetry@gmail.com \nCOVID-19 SAFETY \nMasks 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. \nAbout Under The Table: \nUnder 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. \nAbout Masks4EastVan \nMasks4EastVan is a grassroots mutual aid project that distributes N95 or equivalent masks to neighbours in East Van that began in May 2022. We aim to make information about the importance of high quality pandemic protections accessible to the general public. We conduct home deliveries and have pop-up distribution events. Masks4EastVan was founded by two disabled and neurodivergent queer trans people of colour\, and has expanded to be now run by a small group of volunteers. https://linktr.ee/masks4eastvan \nThis event has been made possible by Massy Voices\, the Government of Canada\, and Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture. \nWith Featured Poets \nJane Shi lives on the occupied\, stolen\, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam)\, Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish)\, and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her writing has appeared in the Disability Visibility Blog\, The Offing\, and Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press)\, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press\, 2022) and the winner of The Capilano Review’s 2022 In(ter)ventions in the Archive Contest. Her debut poetry collection echolalia echolalia comes out Fall 2024 with Brick Books. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource\, land is not mined\, hearts are not filched\, and bodies are not violated. \nKay Kassirer (they/them) is a spoken word poet whose autobiographical poetry focuses on gender & sexuality\, grief\, disability\, and sex work. Kay has toured internationally performing at venues like Buddies in Bad Times Theatre\, Busboys and Poets\, and the Bowery Poetry Club. They have competed at over a dozen national and international poetry slam festivals earning their place on several competitive final stages. Kay curated and edited A Whore’s Manifesto: An Anthology of Writing and Artwork by Sex Workers published by Thornapple Press. Their work has been featured in numerous places\, including Button Poetry\, Slamfind\, Write About Now\, and Voicemail Poems.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/under-the-table-masks4eastvan-fundraiser-ft-jane-shi-kay-kassirer-2/
LOCATION:BC
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230830T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230830T210000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230811T180329Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230811T180329Z
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SUMMARY:It Stops Here with Rueben George and Guests
DESCRIPTION:On Wednesday\, August 30th at 7pm\, join Massy Arts Society\, Massy Books\, SFU Library\, and SFU Public Square for a special evening with prominent environmental activist\, spiritual leader\, and Sundance Chief\, Rueben George\, for the launch of his book\, It Stops Here: Standing up for Our Lands\, Our Waters\, and Our People. The event will be moderated by Andrea Crossan and feature co-author Michael Simpson and special guests. \nIt Stops Here is a healing\, personal account of one man’s confrontation with colonization that illuminates the philosophy and values of a First Nation on the front lines of the fight against an extractive industry\, colonial government\, and the threat to the life-giving Salish Sea. \n“Rueben George is a force of nature—literally. He is carrying on his family’s long history protecting nature in all its forms. Devastating extractive practices in the form of pipelines\, mining\, clearcutting\, and overfishing threatens the health\, safety\, and wellbeing to Indigenous lands\, waters\, and all of nature. Rueben’s book is a powerful call to action rooted in the teachings of his ancestors\, to gather warriors from all nations and take back control over our collective futures.” —Dr. Pamela Palmater\, Mi’kmaw lawyer\, professor\, and Indigenous rights advocate from Eel River Bar First Nation \nRegistration is free/by donation\, open to all and required for entrance. \nIt Stops Here: Standing up for Our Lands\, Our Waters\, and Our People will be available to purchase before and after the event. There will be an opportunity for book-signing following the moderated portion of this event. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema at 149 West Hastings Street at the Downtown SFU campus. \nWe will reserve 20 seats for elderly community members who do not operate computers/ are otherwise unable to register. \nCovid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and although not mandatory at SFU\, they are recommended (N95 masks are best as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms\, that you stay home. Thank you kindly. \nAbout the book \nIt Stops Here: Standing up for Our Lands\, Our Waters\, and Our People \nIt Stops Here is 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 recounts the intergenerational struggle of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to overcome the harms of colonization and the powerful stance they have taken alongside allies and other Indigenous nations across Turtle Island against the development of the Trans Mountain Pipeline—a fossil fuel megaproject on their unceded territories. \nThe book provides a firsthand account of this resurgence as told by Rueben George\, one of the most prominent leaders of the widespread opposition to the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. He has devoted more than a decade of his life to fighting the project and shares stories about his family’s deep ancestral connections to their unceded lands and waters\, which are today more commonly known as Vancouver\, British Columbia and the Burrard Inlet. Despite the systematic attempts at cultural genocide enacted by the colonial state\, Rueben recounts how key leaders of his community\, such as his grandfather\, Chief Dan George\, always taught the younger generations to be proud of who they were and to remember the importance of their connection to the inlet. \nPart memoir\, part call to action\, It Stops Here urges us to prioritize the sacred over oil and extractive industries\, while insisting that settler society honour Indigenous law and jurisdiction over unceded territories rather than seeing lands as natural resources to be exploited. \nAbout the authors \nRUEBEN GEORGE is Sundance Chief and a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN). After working as a family counsellor for twenty years\, he became manager of the TWN’s Sacred Trust initiative to protect the unceded Tsleil-Waututh lands and waters from the proposed Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. Over the past decade\, he has travelled across the world and built alliances with Indigenous people fighting for water\, land\, and human rights\, and has become an internationally renowned voice for such issues. Rueben has been adopted and made a Sun Dance Chief by two Lakota families\, and incorporates his cultural and spiritual teachings in all aspects of his life and work. \nMICHAEL SIMPSON is Lecturer in the School of Geography & Sustainable Development at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. \nAbout the moderator \nANDREA CROSSAN is a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. She is an award-winning radio journalist with over 30 years of experience\, reporting from over a dozen countries\, including Afghanistan\, Pakistan\, Ukraine\, South Africa\, Uganda\, and Brazil. She is currently the executive editor of the Global Reporting Centre (GRC)\, an independent news organization based out of UBC. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/it-stops-here-with-rueben-george-and-guests/
LOCATION:BC
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230830T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230830T203000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230823T221319Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230823T221319Z
UID:18166-1693422000-1693427400@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Storied: Turning memories and personal experiences into stories and art with Harrison Mooney\, Kim Spencer\, and Sheryda Warrener
DESCRIPTION:Join the BC and Yukon Book Prizes for Storied: Discussions on Books\, Publishing\, and the Creative Process. \nOn Wednesday\, August 30th\, Harrison Mooney\, Kim Spencer\, and Sheryda Warrener will be offering mini-lectures on taking personal experiences and memories and turning them into art and stories for an audience. Harrison Mooney’s book Invisible Boy: A memoir of self-discovery is a finalist for the 2023 Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. Kim Spencer’s book Weird Rules to Follow is a finalist for the 2023 Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize. Sheryda Warrener’s book Test Piece is a finalist for the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/storied-turning-memories-and-personal-experiences-into-stories-and-art-with-harrison-mooney-kim-spencer-and-sheryda-warrener/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Workshop
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ORGANIZER;CN="BC and Yukon Book Prizes":MAILTO:megan@bcyukonbookprizes.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230830T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230830T133000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230830T172600Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230830T172600Z
UID:18237-1693396800-1693402200@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Summer Issue Book Club: In(ter)ventions in the Archive
DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, August 30\, 2023\n12:00pm PST / 3:00pm EST\nFree Admission\nVirtual attendance by Zoom (Register on Eventbrite) \nTo celebrate the summer launch of Issue 3.50: In(ter)ventions in the Archive\, The Capilano Review invites readers to join us for an open “book club”-style discussion of the issue alongside co-editors Deanna Fong and Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross. The event will open with an informal discussion of how the issue’s archival concept and contents materialized. We will then open the floor to readers. Which pieces spoke to you and why? What is your own experience working in archives\, and how did the issue reflect (or not reflect) that experience? What connections did you find between pieces? Bring your thoughts and questions for discussion. We value your engagement and are excited to connect with you in this new forum! \nAccessibility and joining information:\nThe event will be held over Zoom. Attendees are invited to pre-register through Eventbrite. If you have trouble accessing the Zoom link through Eventbrite\, email us at contact@thecapilanoreview.com for access. \nThe Capilano Review is committed to ensuring an inclusive and respectful environment for all that is free of harassment\, violence\, and discrimination. We will not tolerate any disrespectful conduct at the event\, and are committed to preventing and eliminating inappropriate behaviour through active moderation.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/summer-issue-book-club-interventions-in-the-archive/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Panel
ORGANIZER;CN="The Capilano Review":MAILTO:contact@thecapilanoreview.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230827T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230827T160000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230811T180311Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230811T180311Z
UID:17916-1693144800-1693152000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Imperial Currents with Fareh Malik\, Hasan Namir\, Brandon Wint\, & Ivan Zarin
DESCRIPTION:On Sunday\, August 27th at 2pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books\, Book*hug Press\, Mawenzi House Publishers\, Write Bloody North\, and Talonbooks in presenting the poetry reading Imperial Currents with Fareh Malik\, Hasan Namir\, Brandon Wint\, and Ivan Drury Zarin. \nImperial Currents brings together four dynamic poets navigating colonialism\, racism\, masculinity and their overlaps. Join us for an exploration of collectivity and the power of story to breathe hope into being. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. \nPlease refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the books: \nStreams That Lead Somewhere (Mawenzi House Publishers Ltd.\, 2022) \nFareh Malik’s debut collection\, Streams That Lead Somewhere\, aims to explore the intersection between mental illness and social racialization. The poet dives deep into his long history with Islamophobia\, racism\, and other forms of discrimination. The book focuses on perseverance and the silver lining that is ever on the horizon with the expectation that you can make it out of any trial or tribulation\, if you just follow your dream to wherever it leads. \nWar / Torn (Book*hug Press\, 2019) \nLambda Literary Award-winner Hasan Namir’s debut collection of poetry\, War / Torn\, is a brazen and lyrical interrogation of religion and masculinity—the performance and sense of belonging they delineate and draw together. Namir summons prayer\, violence\, and the sensuality of love\, revisiting tenets of Islam and dictates of war to break the barriers between the profane and the sacred. \nDivine Animal (Write Bloody North\, 2020) \nDivine Animal is the debut poetry book by celebrated\, Ontario-born poet and spoken word performer Brandon Wint. The collection is an elegant\, expansive mapping of Brandon Wint’s relationship to the legacy and wake of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade\, as one of its living\, Black descendants. The Atlantic ocean is figured as both a historical site and diasporic metaphor from which to explore the complex journeys and negotiations that brought his family to Canada from Jamaica and Barbados. \nDivine Animal reckons with the ways the logic of colonialism has brought humankind into an era of ecological devastation\, climate change catastrophe and eco-grief. In this way\, Brandon Wint offers a thoughtful\, empathetic poetics that seeks to re-connect the human world with the natural world. Above all\, Divine Animal is a work that lives powerfully at the intersection of celebration and grief. These poems testify to the realities of beauty on Earth\, while casting a necessary eye upon the human proclivity to invent sophisticated\, resilient modes of violence and inequity. \nUn (Talonbooks\, 2022) \nAgainst a backdrop of moderate gains and terrible defeats\, Un laments socialism’s failure to deliver formerly colonized peoples out of imperialism’s terrible grasp. Drawing on the US War on Terror and the disappearances of people extrajudicially apprehended from the Middle East and North Africa\, this collection of poetry interrogates the subjectivity of Western revolutionary socialism in the early twenty-first century. Absence\, negation\, and unbeing echo throughout the text: the negativity of a global class struggle now forty years in retreat. But because Un’s philosophical method is dialectical\, negation does not mean hopelessness or final defeat. Instead\, Un hints at new revolutionary possibilities – the emergence of old\, tidal syntheses – through the combination of historical difficulty with the arrival of unknown days ahead. \nAbout the authors \nIraqi-Canadian author Hasan Namir graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in English and received the Ying Chen Creative Writing Student Award. He is the author of God in Pink (2015)\, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction and was chosen as one of the Top 100 Books of 2015 by The Globe and Mail. His work has also been featured on Huffington Post\, Shaw TV\, Airbnb\, in the film God in Pink: A Documentary\, Breakfast Television Toronto\, CTV Morning Live Saskatoon. He was recently named a writer to watch by CBC books. He is also the author of poetry book War/Torn (2019\, Book*Hug Press)\, children’s book The Name I Call Myself (2020\, Arsenal Pulp Press)\, Umbilical Cord (Book*Hug Press) and Banana Dream (2023\, Neal Porter Books). Hasan was the 2021 LGBTQ2s+ guest curator for Word Vancouver. He lives on the unceded territories of the Kwantlen\, Katzie\, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen First Nations with his husband and their child. \nFareh Malik is an author and artist from the Greater Toronto Area. Originally a spoken word poet\, he has been recognized internationally by many literary presses and has won several poetry awards in his emerging career. Recently\, he was named the 2022 PEN Canada New Voices Award winner\, and his book Streams That Lead Somewhere was longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. \nBrandon Wint is an Ontario-born poet\, spoken word artist\, educator and multi-disciplinary storyteller based in western Canada. For more than a decade\, Brandon has been a sought-after touring performance poet\, having shared his work all over Canada\, and internationally at festivals and showcases in the United States\, Australia\, Jamaica\, Latvia and Lithuania. Brandon is ever-grateful for the power of poetry as a spiritual technology and social force. He is devoted to using poetry as a tool for refining his sense of justice\, love\, and intimacy. Brandon Wint’s poems and essays have been published in The Ex Puritan\, Event Magazine\, Arc Poetry Magazine\, and Black Writers Matter\, among other places. Divine Animal (Write Bloody North\, 2020) is his debut collection of poetry. His debut film\, My Body Is A Poem/The World Makes With Me screened at DOXA documentary film festival in 2023. \nIvan Drury Zarin is a long time socialist organizer\, writer\, and publisher\, who lives on the unceded territories of the Squamish\, Musqeam\, and Tsleil Waututh nations\, in Vancouver. He is a new parent with family around Vancouver\, central Saskatchewan\, and western Belarus. He teaches history and labour studies at Fraser International College at SFU and drives a paratransit bus as a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union. He is the author of Un\, a book of poems published by Talon Books in 2022\, and is editor and contributor to Red Braid Alliance’s book of essays\, A Separate Star: Politics and Strategy for Anti-Capitalist\, Anti-Colonial\, and Anti-Imperialist Struggle\, published by ARP Books in 2023.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/imperial-currents-with-fareh-malik-hasan-namir-brandon-wint-ivan-zarin/
LOCATION:BC
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/https___cdn.evbuc_.com_images_564937509_462702708128_1_original.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230826T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230826T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230811T180254Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230811T180254Z
UID:17913-1693072800-1693080000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Not That Kind of Place by Michael Melgaard with Guests
DESCRIPTION:On Saturday\, August 26th at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books\, and House of Anansi Press\, ECW Press\, and Atria Press for the launch of Not That Kind of Place by Michael Melgaard with guests Curtis LeBlanc and Scott Alexander Howard. \nProvocative and haunting\, Not That Kind of Place is a literary anti-mystery\, a compelling exploration of our obsession with true-crime stories and the devastating effects of systemic violence on our most vulnerable populations. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the books \nNot That Kind of Place (House of Anansi Press\, 2023) \nIn May 1997\, eighteen-year-old Laura McPherson left her house for a run and didn’t return. Twenty years later\, a reporter arrives in the small town of Griffiths to write an article about the unsolved murder of Laura McPherson. He is the most recent in a long line of journalists\, podcasters\, and amateur sleuths seeking new insights into what really happened to Laura. \nLaura’s younger brother\, David\, a repressed and stuck thirty-something\, is dealing with the recent death of his mother when the reporter comes knocking. The last surviving family member\, David has lived a sheltered life\, protected from the prying eyes of the media by his mother. But David cannot escape the past forever\, and soon finds himself confronting the lasting impact of his sister’s death. As David learns more about his sister and the history of Griffiths\, his eyes are opened to the casual violence\, misogyny\, and racism that lurk just below the surface of his seemingly placid community. \nProvocative and haunting\, Not That Kind of Place is a literary anti-mystery\, a compelling exploration of our obsession with true-crime stories and the devastating effects of systemic violence on our most vulnerable populations. \nSunsetter (ECW Press\, 2023) \nWhen two teens\, Dallan and Hannah\, attend the opening night of the infamous Sunsetter rodeo\, they find themselves entangled in the suspicious deaths of their two closest loved ones. Driven by loss\, rage\, and their gut instincts for justice\, they channel their grief and confusion into uncovering the criminal truth about their small town of Perron\, a prairie community that has been long deserted by industry\, leaving a ghostly emptiness of abandoned gravel pits\, golf courses\, and storefronts. They soon discover that Perron — with its population of bored and discontented youth\, as well as police officers who are only looking out for themselves — is the ideal place for a mysterious and omnipresent drug trade to flourish. Soon enough\, Dallan and Hannah are being tailed by Deputy Arnason\, who has been tasked with protecting the reputation of the local police\, even as his conscience screams in protest with every move he makes. \nEqual parts crime novel and literary fiction\, Sunsetter is an unflinching story about the opioid crisis\, teen isolation\, police brutality\, and the fickleness of late-stage capitalism. \nThe Other Valley (Simon & Schuster\, 2024) \nSixteen-year-old Odile vies for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position\, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On either side\, it’s the same valley\, the same town. To the east\, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west\, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness. \nWhen Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see\, she realizes that the grieving parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border\, on a mourning tour\, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. \nEdme––who is brilliant\, funny\, and the only person to truly know Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy\, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate. Yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy\, imperiling her entire future. \nAbout the authors: \nMichael Melgaard is the author of the short story collection\, Pallbearing\, and the novel Not That Kind of Place. His writing has appeared in Best Canadian Stories\, LitHub and Joyland. He is a former book critic for the National Post and lives in Toronto. \nCurtis LeBlanc (he/him) is the author of two poetry collections\, Little Wild and Birding in the Glass Age of Isolation (Nightwood Editions). His debut novel\, Sunsetter\, was published in Spring 2023 with ECW Press. He is the co-founder of Rahila’s Ghost Press. \nScott Alexander Howard lives in Vancouver\, British Columbia. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard\, where his work focused on the relationship between memory\, emotion\, and literature. The Other Valley is his first novel.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/not-that-kind-of-place-by-michael-melgaard-with-guests-2/
LOCATION:BC
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/https___cdn.evbuc_.com_images_564944869_462702708128_1_original.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230824T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230824T220000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230721T170127Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230721T170127Z
UID:17788-1692901800-1692914400@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Wild Prose Readings Presents: Troubled Towns and Waters with Curtis LeBlanc\, Michael Melgaard and Mike Sadava
DESCRIPTION:Please join us for an evening of small-town and watery crime literature! The evening will begin with an open mic at 7 – bring your writing to share! Featured readers will begin at 7:30 p.m.: Vancouver-based poet and novelist Curtis LeBlanc will read from his debut novel\, Sunsetter\, which is about crime and drugs at a small-town rodeo; Toronto-based\, island-raised author Michael Melgaard will read from his debut novel\, Not That Kind of Place\, which is about the aftermath of a murder in a small town on Vancouver Island; and local author Mike Sadava will read from his debut novel\, Troubled Waters\, which is about a potential earth-changing experiment gone horribly wrong and the international crime behind it. \nPlease bring cash for admission and authors’ books.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/wild-prose-readings-presents-troubled-towns-and-waters-with-curtis-leblanc-michael-melgaard-and-mike-sadava/
LOCATION:Paul Phillips Hall\, 1923 Fernwood Road\, Victoria\, BC\, V8T 0A5\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch,Open Mic,Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/August-Instagram.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Wild Prose Reading Series":MAILTO:susan.sanford.blades@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230824T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230824T190000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230811T180354Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230811T180354Z
UID:17945-1692896400-1692903600@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Ink Slinger Sampler:  Local Writers at the Night Market
DESCRIPTION:Wordstorm members will be showcasing their poetry\, fiction\, and creative non-fiction at a free family-friendly public event open to all ages on August 24th from 5 pm to 7 pm. The event happens in the atrium of the Harbourfront Library during Nanaimo’s Commercial Street Night Market. \nYou’ll be treated to twelve local poets and authors presenting excerpts of their work with a new presentation every ten minutes. You’ll get to meet and chat with poets and writers who will also have poetry chapbooks\, novels and other literary delights on display and available for purchase.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/ink-slinger-sampler-local-writers-at-the-night-market/
LOCATION:Vancouver Island Regional Library\, Nanaimo Harbourfront Branch\, 90 Commercial Street\, Nanaimo\, BC\, V9R 5G4\, Canada
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Ink-Slinger-Sampler-FB-Post-2-copy.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Wordstorm Society of the Arts":MAILTO:wordstormsociety@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230822T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230822T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230811T180235Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230811T180235Z
UID:17910-1692727200-1692734400@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Not That Kind of Place by Michael Melgaard with Guests
DESCRIPTION:On Saturday\, August 26th at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books\, and House of Anansi Press\, ECW Press\, and Atria Press for the launch of Not That Kind of Place by Michael Melgaard with guests Curtis LeBlanc and Scott Alexander Howard. \nProvocative and haunting\, Not That Kind of Place is a literary anti-mystery\, a compelling exploration of our obsession with true-crime stories and the devastating effects of systemic violence on our most vulnerable populations. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the books \nNot That Kind of Place (House of Anansi Press\, 2023) \nIn May 1997\, eighteen-year-old Laura McPherson left her house for a run and didn’t return. Twenty years later\, a reporter arrives in the small town of Griffiths to write an article about the unsolved murder of Laura McPherson. He is the most recent in a long line of journalists\, podcasters\, and amateur sleuths seeking new insights into what really happened to Laura. \nLaura’s younger brother\, David\, a repressed and stuck thirty-something\, is dealing with the recent death of his mother when the reporter comes knocking. The last surviving family member\, David has lived a sheltered life\, protected from the prying eyes of the media by his mother. But David cannot escape the past forever\, and soon finds himself confronting the lasting impact of his sister’s death. As David learns more about his sister and the history of Griffiths\, his eyes are opened to the casual violence\, misogyny\, and racism that lurk just below the surface of his seemingly placid community. \nProvocative and haunting\, Not That Kind of Place is a literary anti-mystery\, a compelling exploration of our obsession with true-crime stories and the devastating effects of systemic violence on our most vulnerable populations. \nSunsetter (ECW Press\, 2023) \nWhen two teens\, Dallan and Hannah\, attend the opening night of the infamous Sunsetter rodeo\, they find themselves entangled in the suspicious deaths of their two closest loved ones. Driven by loss\, rage\, and their gut instincts for justice\, they channel their grief and confusion into uncovering the criminal truth about their small town of Perron\, a prairie community that has been long deserted by industry\, leaving a ghostly emptiness of abandoned gravel pits\, golf courses\, and storefronts. They soon discover that Perron — with its population of bored and discontented youth\, as well as police officers who are only looking out for themselves — is the ideal place for a mysterious and omnipresent drug trade to flourish. Soon enough\, Dallan and Hannah are being tailed by Deputy Arnason\, who has been tasked with protecting the reputation of the local police\, even as his conscience screams in protest with every move he makes. \nEqual parts crime novel and literary fiction\, Sunsetter is an unflinching story about the opioid crisis\, teen isolation\, police brutality\, and the fickleness of late-stage capitalism. \nThe Other Valley (Simon & Schuster\, 2024) \nSixteen-year-old Odile vies for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position\, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On either side\, it’s the same valley\, the same town. To the east\, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west\, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness. \nWhen Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see\, she realizes that the grieving parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border\, on a mourning tour\, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. \nEdme––who is brilliant\, funny\, and the only person to truly know Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy\, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate. Yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy\, imperiling her entire future. \nAbout the authors: \nMichael Melgaard is the author of the short story collection\, Pallbearing\, and the novel Not That Kind of Place. His writing has appeared in Best Canadian Stories\, LitHub and Joyland. He is a former book critic for the National Post and lives in Toronto. \nCurtis LeBlanc (he/him) is the author of two poetry collections\, Little Wild and Birding in the Glass Age of Isolation (Nightwood Editions). His debut novel\, Sunsetter\, was published in Spring 2023 with ECW Press. He is the co-founder of Rahila’s Ghost Press. \nScott Alexander Howard lives in Vancouver\, British Columbia. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard\, where his work focused on the relationship between memory\, emotion\, and literature. The Other Valley is his first novel.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/not-that-kind-of-place-by-michael-melgaard-with-guests/
LOCATION:BC
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/https___cdn.evbuc_.com_images_556610709_462702708128_1_original.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230818T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230818T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230811T180218Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230811T180218Z
UID:17907-1692381600-1692388800@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:From Queer to Asian to Publication: Aaron Chan\, CA Tanaka & Catherine Lewis
DESCRIPTION:On Friday\, August 18th from 6-8pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books\, Signal 8 Press\, Orca Book Publishers\, and 845 Press for “From Queer to Asian to Publication”\, a reading and workshop with Aaron Chan\, Candie Tanaka\, and Catherine Lewis. \nIn celebration of Pride\, we are excited to host talented writers from the Queer Asian literary community in Vancouver for this hybrid reading and conversational workshop. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free\, open to all and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nThis event will have ASL interpretation. \nCovid 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. \nAbout the books: \nAaron Chan’s This City is a Minefield \nThis City is a Minefield is a collection of reflective memoir and personal essays told from a genuine and unique voice about growing up and coming of age as a young gay Chinese man in Vancouver. Thoughtful and honest\, the stories and essays recounted are unafraid of analyzing and criticizing the status quo\, whether it be Chinese culture’s unfavourable view of homosexuality\, or the gay community’s ill-addressed\, rampant sexual racism. At the same time an intimate\, tender love letter to Vancouver filled with mixed emotions – joy\, nostalgia\, sadness – Chan weaves together poignant\, heartbreaking experiences of navigating and reconciling conflicting cultural and queer identities\, complicated romantic relationships\, sex and trauma\, and overwhelming loneliness that coalesce to form a rounded portrait of a quiet soul on a search for love and belonging. This City is a Minefield serves as a marker of life as a young queer person of colour in this modern age. \nC.A. Tanaka’s Baby Drag Queen \nTransgender teen Ichiro enters a drag contest in hopes of earning enough money to live off the grid. \nIchiro is a transgender youth in his final year of high school. He has a job as a dishwasher to earn money to help support his single mother. But it’s not enough. Ichiro dreams of buying a camper van for the two of them so they can escape and live off the grid and not have to worry about money anymore. A budding drag queen\, he takes a second job performing drag at a local club and learns of an upcoming contest where the prize money would be enough to pay for a camper van. But nobody knows he does drag. So when some of his friends find out what he’s really doing in the evenings\, Ichiro is worried about what they will think of him. Will they still accept him? \nCatherine Lewis’ Zipless \n“Catherine Lewis’ Zipless wears femme armour. These poems are fortified by Valentino stilettos and sundresses in August’s heat. The thick-skinned and vivid voice firmly leads the reader to fertility clinics\, first dates and Pride parties. Zipless leads us further still—into the complex positionality of a mature polyamorous Asian bisexual navigating a queer world that is often too narrowly-focused to see her multitudes. Lewis widens the landscape of queer poetics\, punching 4-inch-deep heel marks into the ground as she goes.” — Amber Dawn \nAbout the authors: \nAaron Chan is a writer born and raised on unceded Coast Salish territories (Vancouver\, BC). He is the author of This City Is a Minefield (Signal 8 Press)\, a collection of memoir and personal essays about growing up gay and Asian in Vancouver. Currently\, Aaron is currently a Creative Writing MFA candidate at the University of California Riverside and is the recipient of the L.M. and Marcia McQuern Endowed Graduate Award in Non-fiction Writing. The Broken Heart\, his debut children’s picture book\, is forthcoming in June 2024 with Rocky Pond Books. \nCandie Tanaka is a multiracial trans writer\, artist and librarian challenging the binaries continually reconstructed between self and other while exploring archive and memory in a socio-political context. They are a creative writing graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University and have a BFA in Intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. Their first YA book\, Baby Drag Queen was published with Orca Books in April 2023. They’ve also published work in Resonance: Essays on the Craft of Life and Writing with Anvil Press and This Will Only Take A Minute: Canadian Flash Fiction with Guernica Editions. \nCatherine Lewis (she/her) is a Chinese Canadian writer and poet. Her debut poetry chapbook Zipless (845 Press\, 2021) is a finalist for two Bisexual Book Awards\, for Poetry and for Bi Writer of the Year. Her work has been published in PRISM international\, The Humber Literary Review\, and Plenitude Magazine. First runner-up for Pulp Literature’s 2023 Magpie Award for Poetry and longlisted for Surrey Muse’s 2022 Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction\, she has been shortlisted in creative nonfiction contests at Room Magazine and The Fiddlehead. She lives in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam\, Squamish\, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/from-queer-to-asian-to-publication-aaron-chan-ca-tanaka-catherine-lewis/
LOCATION:BC
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/https___cdn.evbuc_.com_images_556110199_462702708128_1_original.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230818T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230820T150000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230712T211636Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211636Z
UID:17531-1692363600-1692543600@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Seaside Art\, Photography & Book Fair
DESCRIPTION:Sunshine Coast artists\, photography and authors will be showcasing and selling their work at this free event at the Seaside Centre\, 5790 Teredo Street\, Sechelt\, BC. There will be literary readings and art workshops. \nArtists and Photographers include:\nRoger Handling\nKasia Krolikowska\nPaula O’Brien\nPaddy Meade\nKevin Wells\nVash Step and his Sunshine Coast photography group\nPaddy Meade\nCharmaine Bayntun \nAuthors\, include:\nHeather Conn\nMarion Crook\nCathalynn Labonte-Smith\nSCWES Members’ chapbook table\nSharon Eastwood\nKylie Hutchinson\nCat Mac\nHolly Talbot (eight-year-old author of two published books)
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/seaside-art-photography-book-fair/
LOCATION:BC
CATEGORIES:Festival
ORGANIZER;CN="Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society":MAILTO:sunshinecoastwritersandeditors@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230817
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230822
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230216T220601Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230216T220601Z
UID:15438-1692237600-1692583199@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts
DESCRIPTION:Join Canada’s longest running summer gathering of Canadian writers and readers\, featuring established literary stars and exciting\, new voices… with opportunities for writers and readers to mingle amidst Rockwood’s heritage gardens.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/sunshine-coast-festival-of-the-written-arts/
LOCATION:Rockwood Pavilion\, 5511 Shorncliffe Ave\, Sechelt\, BC\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Festival
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230816T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230816T170000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230823T220833Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230823T220833Z
UID:18084-1692172800-1692205200@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Brandi Bird + Friends Celebrate the Launch of The All + Flesh
DESCRIPTION:On Wednesday\, September 6th at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books and House of Anansi Press to celebrate the launch of The All + Flesh by Brandi Bird. \nBrandi Bird will be joined by Samantha Nock\, Mallory Tater\, Heather Saluti and host Selina Boan at this celebration of Brandi’s long-anticipated debut poetry collection. \n“I … will be reading these poems for the rest of my life.” — Billy-Ray Belcourt\, author of A Minor Chorus \n“These poems are tender and surprising; they are holes travelling through time and space. They are able to shapeshift God into pills\, prayers\, seeds\, and stars. The All + Flesh has taken root in my mind and I’m happy to let it grow there.” —Jessica Johns\, author of Bad Cree \nThe All + Flesh will be available for purchase at the event\, care of Massy Books. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the book: \nThe All + Flesh (House of Anansi Press\, 2023) \nBrandi Bird’s long-anticipated debut poetry collection\, The All + Flesh\, explores the concepts of health\, place\, and memory. These frank\, transcendent poems expose binaries that exist inside those relationships\, then teases them apart in the hope of moving toward a decolonial future. Bird’s work is highly concerned with how outer and inner landscapes move and change within the confines language\, a tradition of movement that has been lost for many who don’t speak their Indigenous languages or live on their homelands. Bird ultimately writes poetry for their kin\, whether they be ancestral or chosen. \nAbout the author & readers: \nBrandi Bird is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux\, Cree and Métis writer from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on the land of the Squamish\, Tsleil-Waututh & Musqueam peoples. Their chapbook I Am Still Too Much was published by Rahila’s Ghost Press in Spring 2019. Their first full-length poetry collection The All + Flesh was published in August 2023 by House of Anansi Press. Their work can also be found in Poetry is Dead\, Room Magazine\, Brick Magazine\, and others. \nSamantha Nock is an apihtaw’kos’an iskwew who grew up in Treaty 8 territory in Northeast BC. Her family is originally from Ile-a-la-Crosse (Sakitawak)\, SK. Her debut book of poetry A Family of Dreamers will be available Fall 2024 with Talon Books. \nMallory Tater is the author of the poetry collection This Will Be Good (Book*Hug Press 2018) and a novel\, The Birth Yard (HarperCollins Canada 2020). She is the publisher of Rahila’s Ghost Press\, a recently retired poetry chapbook press. \nHeather Saluti is an Italian/Ukrainian poet\, visual artist\, and expressive arts therapist based on the unceded ancestral lands of the Musqueam\, Squamish\, & Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Their poems have appeared in Canthius\, Beyond the Veil Press\, CV2\, LBRNTH and others. They probably want to talk to you about their fandoms and enjoy making lists. \nAbout the host: \nSelina Boan is a white settler-nehiyaw (Cree) writer living on the traditional\, unceded territories of thexʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam)\, səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh)\, and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples. Her debut poetry collection\, Undoing Hours\, was published in Spring 2021 by Nightwood Editions which won the 2022 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry in English. Her work has been published widely\, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She is a poetry editor for CV2. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/brandi-bird-friends-celebrate-the-launch-of-the-all-flesh/
LOCATION:BC
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230815T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230815T180000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230721T165918Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230721T165918Z
UID:17716-1692122400-1692122400@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Francine Cunningham with Guests
DESCRIPTION:On Tuesday\, August 15th at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books and Invisible Publishing for Francine Cunningham with Guests: Jónína Kirton\, Nadine Bachan & Jennifer B.S. Williams. \n“The stories in God Isn’t Here Today reveal Francine Cunningham as a gimlet eye observer of humanity\, with boundless empathy and a searing sense of humour.” — Doretta Lau\, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the Book: \nGod Isn’t Here Today ricochets between form and genre\, taking readers on a dark\, irreverent\, yet poignant journey led by a unique and powerful new voice. \nDriven by desperation into moments of transformation\, Cunningham’s characters are presented with moments of choice—some for the better and some for the worse. A young man goes to God’s office downtown for advice; a woman discovers she is the last human on Earth; an ice cream vendor is driven insane by his truck’s song; an ageing stripper uses undergarments to enact her escape plan; an incubus tires of his professional grind; and a young woman inherits a power that has survived genocide\, but comes with a burden of its own. \nEven as they flirt with the fantastic\, Cunningham’s stories unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern\, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human nature—and that redemption can arise where we least expect it. \nAbout the Authors \nFrancine Cunningham is an award-winning writer\, artist\, and educator who spends her summer days writing on the Prairies and her winter months teaching in the north. Francine is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta but grew up in Calgary\, Edmonton\, and 100 Mile House\, BC. Francine is also Metis and has settler family roots stretching from as far away as Ireland and Belgium. She currently resides in Alberta and previously spent over a decade calling Vancouver her home. \nHer debut book of poems On/Me (Caitlin Press) was nominated for The BC and Yukon Book Prize\, The Indigenous Voices Award\, and The Vancouver Book Award. Her debut book of short stories God Isn’t Here Today (Invisible Publishing) was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Francine also writes for television with credits including the teen reality show THAT’S AWSM! among others and was a recipient of a Telus StoryHive grant. Her fiction\, non-fiction\, and poetry have also appeared in The Best Canadian Short Stories\, The Best Canadian Non-Fiction\, in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner\, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Prose shortlist\, and on the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist\, among others. \nYou can find out more about her at www.francinecunningham.ca. \nJónína Kirton\, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet and citizen of the Métis Nation of BC currently lives in New Westminster BC\, the unceded territory of the Halkomelem speaking peoples. She was born in Portage la Prairie\, Manitoba\, Treaty 1\, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe\, Cree\, Oji-Cree\, Dakota\, Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry\, An Honest Woman\, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book\, Standing in a River of Time\, merges poetry and lyrical memoir to take us on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on her Métis family. \nNadine Bachan was born in Trinidad and raised in the suburbs of Toronto. Her essays about culture\, family\, and identity have appeared in print and digital publications across North America including Maisonneuve\, Hazlitt\, Canthius\, The New Quarterly\, and Catapult. She has been anthologized in The Best Canadian Essays series and The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Her debut in true-crime writing was published in the “Partners in Crime” edition of The Best New True Crime Stories series. When not at her desk\, Nadine can usually be found crocheting or knitting. \nNadine lives with her partner on the west coast near Jericho Beach. She is currently developing a memoir and a collection of linked short stories. You can learn more at www.linktr.ee/nadinebachan. \nJennifer B.S. Williams (Yes\, those are her middle initials) is a Gitksan/Sekani author and mother currently living in Chilliwack\, BC. Jennifer’s writing takes the form of creative nonfiction\, flash fiction\, scriptwriting and poetry. Her writing evokes the culture she represents\, giving a new voice to the ancestors she carries with her. With an Associates Degree in Aboriginal Studies from Langara College and a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University\, Jennifer’s writing is immersed in her life experiences as an Indigenous woman. Each piece she creates represents an intentional move forward on her journey of cultural reclamation. In 2021\, Jennifer produced a manuscript of poetry\, including 25 distinct pieces\, titled “Disconnected Existence”. She is currently working on extending this collection of poetry under the mentorship of the N’we Jinan ArtWorks Emerging Artist program.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/francine-cunningham-with-guests/
LOCATION:BC
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230812T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230812T150000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230712T211835Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211835Z
UID:17533-1691845200-1691852400@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors 2023
DESCRIPTION:The winners of the first Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society Book Awards for BC Authors will be announced at the Gibsons Public Market. The emcee is Vince R. Ditrich of Spirit of the West fame and author of the hilarious Liquor Vicar Series. Many of the finalists for the contest will be in attendance. The bookmobile from the Little Bookshop from Squamish will be present to sell the finalists books.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/scwes-book-awards-for-bc-authors-2023-2/
LOCATION:Gibsons Public Market\, 473 Gower Point Rd\, Gibsons\, BC\, V0N 1V0\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Awards
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/stack-books-trophy-against-green-background_441362-894.jpeg
ORGANIZER;CN="Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society":MAILTO:sunshinecoastwritersandeditors@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230810
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230812
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230302T221805Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230302T221805Z
UID:15822-1691632800-1691719199@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:2nd Annual Sunshine Coast Art & Words Festival
DESCRIPTION:Come to the Gibsons Public Market on the Sunshine Coast August 10-14 to enjoy literary readings paired with an art exhibit\, writers’ and artists workshops and more.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/2nd-annual-sunshine-coast-art-words-festival/
LOCATION:Gibsons Public Market\, 473 Gower Point Rd\, Gibsons\, BC\, V0N 1V0\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Festival
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SCWES_logo_col_o_sm-1-1.png
ORGANIZER;CN="Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society":MAILTO:sunshinecoastwritersandeditors@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230802T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230802T180000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230712T211800Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211800Z
UID:17527-1690999200-1690999200@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Ever-Arriving Openings: An Evening with Adeena Karasick
DESCRIPTION:On Thurs. Aug. 3 at 6pm\, join Massy Arts and Dialogos / Lavender Ink for the double launch of Adeena Karasick’s latest poetry books: Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations and Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings . \nThrough a poetics of politically engaged aesthetic resistance\, Ærotomania negotiates turbulence\, loss\, nostalgia and hope\, while the poems in Ouvert Oeuvre speak-sing to re-entering the world after a long period in quarantine. Adeena will be joined by special guest Jim Andrews\, who will be screening some of their recent vispo collaborations: Lorem Ipsum\, Checking In 1\, Checking In 2\, Touching in the Wake of the Virus. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the books \nÆrotomania: The Book of LumenationsLavender Ink\, 2023) \nA lyrically explosive mix of pathos\, comedy\, and wit\, and a visual feast in full color. \nMarked by a playful “cognitive dissidence” and a lyrically and visually explosive mix of pathos\, comedy\, and wit\, Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations is Karasick’s twelfth volume of poetry. Through a poetics of politically engaged aesthetic resistance\, this work negotiates turbulence\, loss\, nostalgia and hope\, inscribing a prescient “present” ever-arriving through jubilation and bereavement\, in immanence and irruption\, exposing how the airplane as an erotic theater functions like a language. \nOuvert Oeuvre: Openings (Lavender Ink\, 2023) \nAn ecstatically wrought\, never quite post-Covid celebration/trepidation of openings. \nInscribing what Levinas might call “espace vital” (the space we can survive)\, Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings is an ecstatically wrought\, never quite post-Covid celebration/trepidation of openings. Written by Adeena Karasick and visualized by Warren Lehrer\, the two poems track the pain of openings read through socio-economic\, geographic and bodily space. They explore a range of intralingual etymologies of the word opening\, laced with post-consumerist and erotic language\, theoretical discourse\, philosophical and Kabbalistic aphorisms. The poems foreground language as an organism of hope–highlighting the concept of opening as an ever-swirling palimpsest of spectral voices\, textures\, whispers and codes transported through passion\, politics and pleasure as we negotiate loss and light. This book is the first collaboration between poet\, performer\, cultural theorist and media artist Adeena Karasick\, and pioneer designer/author and vis lit practitioner Warren Lehrer. The poems\, written by Karasick\, speak-sing to re-entering the world after a long period in quarantine. Lehrer choreographs Karasick’s words on the stage of the page and through the pages of this volume. His typographic compositions give form to the interior\, emotional\, metaphorical\, historical and performative underpinnings of the poems. Together\, the writing and visuals create a new whole that engages the reader to become an active participant in the experience/performance of the poems. View the book’s website here. \nAbout the author \nAdeena Karasick\, Ph.D\, is a New York based Canadian poet\, performer\, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of 14 books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected\, urban\, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard)\, “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha)\, noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing\, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein) “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin); “demonstrating how desire flows through language\, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural)\, word-play\, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work.” (Mark Scroggins). Most recently is Massaging the Medium: 7 Pechakuchas\, (The Institute of General Semantics Press: 2022)\, shortlisted for Outstanding Book of the Year Award (ICA\, 2023) and winner of the 2023 Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form. (MEA)\, Checking In (Talonbooks\, 2018) and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press\, Italy\, 2017)\, the libretto for her Spoken Word opera; Salomé: Woman of Valor CD\, (NuJu Records\, 2020)\, and Salomé Birangona\, translation into Bengali (Boibhashik Prokashoni Press\, Kolkata\, 2020). Karasick teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute\, is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology\, Associate International Editor of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication\, 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient and winner of the Voce Donna Italia award for her contributions to feminist thinking\, and has just been appointed Poet Laureate of the Institute of General Semantics. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections\, Simon Fraser University. Hot off the press is Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations\, and Ouvert: Oeuvre: Openings\, (Lavender Ink Press\, 2023). \nAlso featuring: \nJim Andrews has been publishing https://vispo.com since 1996. It’s the centre of his work as a poet\, visual artist\, audio artist\, theoretician and programmer. Vispo.com is a site of interactive\, multimedia poetry.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/ever-arriving-openings-an-evening-with-adeena-karasick/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230801T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230801T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230712T211746Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211746Z
UID:17525-1690912800-1690920000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Poetry Workshops / Chasing The Poem – 4th Edition / All Queer Mentorship
DESCRIPTION:From July 11th to August 1st\, Massy Arts and Massy Books host\, Chasing The Poem – Fourth Edition\, an online poetry workshop marathon for emerging writers\, in three courses created by queer poets to demystify poetry writing\, to present useful writing prompts\, to incite imagination\, and to address political and poetic points of view through poetic literature. \nThe classes – conducted by published poets David Ly + Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch + Isabella Wang\, will be held through Zoom in an exclusively online method\, with 2-hours long experimental courses that will mix literary theory + artistic expression. \nBy the end of this writing marathon\, attendees will have received feedback about their writing by authors in production\, aware of the market’s demands – but also aware of poetry’s potential. \nThe event will be hosted at Massy Arts’ Zoom room. \nTickets are limited\, and registration is mandatory + required for participation. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \n: : \nChasing The Poem – A unique opportunity for emerging writers \nWhether an emerging poet\, unpublished author\, poetry enthusiast\, or someone searching for new ways of expressing their creativity – Chasing The Poem will connect our creative community in three courses: \nJuly 11 – Tue – 6pm to 8pm PST \nDavid Ly \nRe-imagining Your Mythologies \nJuly 18 – Tue – 6pm to 8pm PST \nEli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch \nForm as the container for the personal and the political \nAugust 1 – Tue – 6pm to 8pm PST \nIsabella Wang \nPoetry Lab: Form’s Experimental Roots \n: : \nThe Workshops \n: : \n“Re-imagining Your Mythologies: Writing to See Yourself in Imagistic Poetry” by David Ly \nA workshop for emerging and established poets to practice flexing their imagination in composing poetry with vivid imagery that pushes a narrative of the self forward. \nWhether you love to write with imagery\, or would want to imbue more of it into your poems\, this workshop will be guide you through discussions\, close-readings\, and a series of writing exercises an imagistic poem. While strongly imbuing your poem with images that speak to you\, the other purpose of this workshop will be refining your poem so that it reflects your identity\, and re-imagines ideas (“mythologies”) that you have about yourself. \nAs poets\, we often explore our sense(s) of self in our work\, and by the end of this workshop\, you will leave inspired to explore what other images you can include in future poems\, that resonate with you and speak to your identity. \nDavid Ly is the author of Mythical Man (2020)\, which was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Poetry Award\, and Dream of Me as Water (2022)\, both published under the Anstruther Books imprint of Palimpsest Press. He is also co-editor (with Daniel Zomparelli) of Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press\, 2022). David’s poems have appeared in publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine\, Best Canadian Poetry\, PRISM International\, and The Ex-Puritan\, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. David is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine. \n: : \n“Form as the container for the personal and the political: How to write non-didactic political poetry” by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch \nHow can writing about the daily minutia\, the sounds you like to hear\, the images you can’t get out of your head\, the construction in your city\, the long bus ride to work\, open up space to look at broader political\, social\, or interpersonal trials and difficulties? \nWriting poetry with a political or social “message” is difficult when trying to make sure it doesn’t come off as didactic or overbearing. One way of pushing through this difficulty is to lean on craft\, form\, and hybrid genres/forms in order to help shape your poetry\, the same way you would mold clay with your hands to create pottery. \nThis workshop will try to help workshop attendees to think about multiplicity as a strength in order to give their poems texture\, layers\, feeling\, energy\, elasticity\, and to avoid flatness or didacticism. We are working here with the everything\, the too much\, the big feelings\, the tiny little images stored in the back of ones head\, the gross\, the weird\, the strange\, and we’ll try to whittle it all down to a poem. \nOther ideas we’ll be thinking about: the personal vs. the political\, ways to create lenses through which we can write difficult subject matter\, caring about the self through the writing practice and also the impact on the reader. \nEli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a writer living in Tio’tia:ke. Their work has appeared in The Best \nCanadian Poetry 2018 anthology\, The New Quarterly\, Arc Poetry Magazine\, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019. Their book\, knot body (2020)\, published by Metatron Press\, was shortlisted for the QWF Concordia First Book Award\, and their second book\, The Good Arabs\, published by Metonymy Press in 2021\, was granted the honorary mention for poetry by the Arab American Book Awards and won the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal. They are an acquisitions editor at Metonymy Press. Their translation of Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay’s La fille d’elle-même from the French is forthcoming Spring 2023. With co-editor Samia Marshy\, they are editing El Ghourabaa\, an anthology of weird and experimental queer and trans writing by Arab and Arabophone writers\, forthcoming Spring 2024. \n: : \n“Poetry Lab: Form’s Experimental Roots” by Isabella Wang \nFocused on experimentation as a synaptic device in poetry. This workshop leads participants on an exploration of the experimental foundation of traditional poetic forms\, as well as the synergy from which new\, experimental forms arises from experimentation to shoulder the immediate\, aesthetic\, personal\, environmental\, and political visions of writers today. \nWe will journey with the term poiesis—a beloved term by poets—which translates loosely to mean ’the making of something out of nothing.’ Together\, participants will be encouraged to consider not only language’s ability to bring into being new feelings\, perspectives\, and original metaphors\, but equally how such perspectives are found in the unearthing of new experimental or hybrid forms. \nWhat is the relationship to form and poetic language? How do pre-existing forms or free-verse stanzas assist or hinder a poet’s intended creative representation? Is experimental poetry empowering? Political? An act of refusal and resistance? \nWe will begin by engaging in a series of writing exercises ranging from experimental prose poetry to diptych and triptych forms. Exercises will followed by periods of collaborative sharing. Breaks will be interspersed with sample poems by contemporary poets\, artists\, and activists whose works engage with experimentation\, new\, and found forms. \nWe will end with a fun and artsy individual project to take home\, commemorate our writing in our time together. \nIsabella 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 completing a double-major in English and World Literature at SFU. She works in freelance editing\, is a youth mentor with Vancouver Poetry House\, and web coordinator for Poetry In Canada.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/poetry-workshops-chasing-the-poem-4th-edition-all-queer-mentorship/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230729T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230729T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230712T211728Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211728Z
UID:17500-1690653600-1690660800@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Remnants of Place: Natalie Virginia Lang with Guests
DESCRIPTION:On Saturday\, July 29th at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books\, and Caitlin Press for Remnants of Place: Natalie Virginia Lang with Guests Stephen Collis\, Betsy Warland and Daniela Elza. \nThrough poetic prose\, Lang meditates on the social\, historical\, cultural\, and environmental losses suffered at the hands of infringement upon natural areas. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the book \nRemnants: Reveries of a Mountain Dweller (Caitlin Press\, 2023) \nIn Remnants: Reveries of a Mountain Dweller\, writer and educator Natalie Virginia Lang offers a vision of Sumas Mountain throughout the seasons to expose the impact of toxic progress on Place. Through poetic prose\, Lang meditates on the social\, historical\, cultural\, and environmental losses suffered at the hands of infringement upon natural areas. Remnants ventures into the natural spaces on Sumas Mountain\, illuminating the errors of the modern colonial approach to progress and posing philosophical queries for alternate pathways into the future. \nAbout the author \nNatalie Virginia Lang is an educator and writer\, living on Sumas Mountain in Abbotsford. Lang is passionate about the environment and is dedicated to the preservation of natural spaces\, wherever possible. \nLang holds a Master of Arts degree from Simon Fraser University where she won multiple awards\, including the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Award\, the Julie Andreyev- Animal Lover Scholarship\, the Ewan Clark Memorial Award\, and a Graduate Fellowship. She also has a degree in Literature and Anthropology from the University of the Fraser Valley and an Education degree from Simon Fraser University. \nWith readers: \nStephen Collis is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose\, including The Commons (2008)\, the BC Book Prize winning On the Material (2010)\, Once in Blockadia (2016)\, Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (2018)\, and A History of the Theories of Rain (2021)—all published by Talonbooks. In 2015 he was awarded the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy\, after he was sued by oil company Kinder Morgan\, whose lawyers entered Collis’s poetry as evidence in court. In 2019 he was the recipient of the Latner Writers’ Trust of Canada Poetry Prize in recognition of his body of work. \nBetsy Warland has published 13 books of creative nonfiction and poetry. The second edition of Warland’s Breathing the Page—Reading the Act of Writing (2010)\, is coming out with new material in 2023. Former director of The Writers Studio at SFU\, and the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive\, Warland was a co-founder of the Creative Nonfiction Collective. A manuscript consultant\, editor and teacher\, they received the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Award for Literary Excellence in 2016. In 2022\, an annual national prize\, The VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award\, was launched. \nDaniela Elza lived on three continents before immigrating to Canada in 1999. Her latest poetry collections are the broken boat (2020) and slow erosions (2020). In 2021\, she became a founding member of the Place Mattering Matters Collective and has been actively involved in preserving the affordable housing in her community in Vancouver\, located on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam)\, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish)\, and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is also working on a manuscript on the topic.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/remnants-of-place-natalie-virginia-lang-with-guests/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230727T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230727T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230705T232558Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230705T232558Z
UID:17468-1690484400-1690488000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:The Effects of The Postmedia Effect :: Plus! Panel discussion @ SFU
DESCRIPTION:Join us for an informative and fascinating discussion at SFU’s Harbour Centre campus on Thursday July 27\, as Edge leads a panel discussion on topics surrounding Postmedia and its fall from grace\, Canadian media\, and democratic media policies and what they mean for the future. \nThursday July 27th\, 7:00pm\nTeck Gallery Lounge Room 1400 (Updated)– SFU Harbour Centre\n555 W Hastings St\, Vancouver \nStay tuned for an announcement on the panelists! \nIn this opinion piece for The Globe and Mail\, Edge writes “The hedge funds have unfortunately followed the “harvesting” strategy of cutting costs and selling off assets on the assumption that newspapers are dying. Publications which have instead invested in quality content and developed a loyal base of online subscribers\, however\, have found that there is still a solid business model for newspapers\, even in print. Time will soon grind further upon Postmedia\, and it should be allowed to decline. Federal subsidies work only to keep payments flowing to hedge funds\, with debatable returns for taxpayers.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/the-effects-of-the-postmedia-effect-plus-panel-discussion-sfu/
LOCATION:SFU Harbour Centre\, 515 West Hastings Street\, Vancouver\, BC\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Reading
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230725T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230725T203000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230705T232142Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230705T232142Z
UID:17436-1690311600-1690317000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Brews & Books: Rescue Me with Cathalynn Labonté-Smith
DESCRIPTION:Join North Shore libraries for a refreshing summer series with local authors and local brews! Attend all four Brews & Books to win a prize (details below). \nRescue Me takes you behind the scenes of some of North America’s riskiest search and rescue operations. Author Cathalynn Labonté-Smith shares real-life stories as told by volunteer members of Search and Rescue teams\, who find the lost and rescue the injured in the most extreme conditions and situations the wilds of North America throw at them. From rescuing avalanche victims in blinding snowstorms\, to climbing into vehicles teetering on cliff edges to free passengers from mangled metal or crossing wafer-thin ice to save an injured cross-country skier\, these thrilling first-hand accounts will forever change how you prepare for your next outdoor adventure. Labonté-Smith uncovers everyday dangers\, from the unexpected risks of familiar urban settings to the extreme conditions in North America’s wilderness. Deserving of a place both on your bookshelf and in your backpack\, Rescue Me is a must-read book that could save your life. \nLearn more about Rescue Me and listen to Cathalynn speak about her book on the “Sounds LIke a Search and Rescue Podcast”. \nBrews & Books with Labonté-Smith\nDate: Tuesday\, July 25 from 7:00pm-8:30pm \nLocation: Angry Otter Tap and Forno (1015 Marine Drive\, North Vancouver\, BC V7P 1S6) \nAmple free parking off Mackay Rd\nNearby bus lines: 236\, 240\, 241\, 255\, R2\nRegistration required. Register online or call 604-987-4471\, ext. 8175. See the menu and learn more. \nAbout the Author\nCathalynn Labonté-Smith grew up in Southwestern Alberta and moved to Vancouver\, BC\, to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia (UBC). After graduation\, she worked as a freelance journalist until present. She became a technical writer\, earning a Certificate in Technical Writing from Simon Fraser University. She later went to UBC to complete a Bachelor of Education (Secondary) and taught English\, Journalism\, and other subjects at Vancouver high schools. She lives in Gibsons\, where she is the president and founder of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society\, and North Vancouver\, BC.\, where she is a member of the North Vancouver Writers’ Association. She is a spotter for Civil Air Search and Rescue (CASARA) out of Boundary Bay Airport.\nThis series is presented in partnership by the North Vancouver City Library\, North Vancouver District Library\, and West Vancouver Memorial Library. \nEnter to win! Join us at ALL four Brews & Books events for your chance to win a $60 gift card to the Brews & Books venue of your choice. Details at the first event on July 11 at Bridge Brewing Co.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/brews-books-rescue-me-with-cathalynn-labonte-smith/
LOCATION:Angry Otter Tap & Forno\, 1015 Marine Drive\, North Vancouver\, BC\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Meet & Greet
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/brews-and-books_rescue-me.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="North Vancouver District Public Library":MAILTO:info@nvdpl.ca
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230724T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230729T120000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045028
CREATED:20230622T172402Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T172402Z
UID:17263-1690196400-1690632000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:FBCW Writing Intensive: Getting Personal With Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction
DESCRIPTION:Six days of presentations from award-winning authors and publishers on topics such as truth and creativity\, finding your voice\, structuring life stories\, websites tips to get you noticed\, and recent publishing trends.\nThe sessions will be accompanied by suggested exercises\, with an opportunity to regroup with fellow participants at the end of the week for discussion and debrief.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/fbcw-writing-intensive-getting-personal-with-memoir-and-creative-non-fiction/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Workshop
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/fixed-dates-of-register-now-wi-july.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Federation of BC Writers":MAILTO:rachel@bcwriters.ca
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230723T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230723T160000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045029
CREATED:20230712T211710Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211710Z
UID:17497-1690120800-1690128000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Did You Miss Me? A Recent Release Reading
DESCRIPTION:On Sunday\, July 23rd at 2pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books\, Coach House Books\, Nightwood Editions\, Brick Books\, and House of Anansi Press for Did You Miss Me? A Recent Release Reading with authors Molly Cross-Blanchard\, Selina Boan\, Shaun Robinson and Christopher Evans. \nBridging poetry and short stories\, these four works were launched during times when we could not so easily gather\, and are aching to be celebrated for the stunning collections they are. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the books \nExhibitionist by Molly-Cross Blanchard \nOne minute she’s drying her underwear on the corner of your mirror\, the next she’s asking the sky to swallow her up: the narrator of Exhibitionist oscillates between a complete rejection of shame and the consuming heaviness of it. Painfully funny\, brutally honest\, and alarmingly perceptive\, Molly Cross-Blanchard’s poems use humour and pop culture as vehicles for empathy and sorry-not-sorry confessionalism. What this speaker wants more than anything is to be seen\, to tell you the worst things about herself in hopes that you’ll still like her by the end. \nUndoing Hours by Selina Boan \nSelina Boan’s debut poetry collection\, Undoing Hours\, considers the various ways we undo\, inherit\, reclaim and (re)learn. Boan’s poems emphasize sound and breath. They tell stories of meeting family\, of experiencing love and heartbreak\, and of learning new ways to express and understand the world around her through nêhiyawêwin. \nAs a settler and urban nehiyaw who grew up disconnected from her father’s family and community\, Boan turns to language as one way to challenge the impact of assimilation policies and colonization on her own being and the landscapes she inhabits. Exploring the nexus of language and power\, the effects of which are both far-reaching and deeply intimate\, these poems consider the ways language impacts the way we view and construct the world around us. Boan also explores what it means to be a white settler–nehiyaw woman actively building community and working to ground herself through language and relationships. Boan writes from a place of linguistic tension\, tenderness and care\, creating space to ask questions and to imagine intimate decolonial futures. \nIf You Discover a Fire by Shaun Robinson \nIf You Discover a Fire is a debut collection of poems that make a virtue of their failure to communicate. They forage through the syntax and vocabulary of late-night voicemails\, letters to the editor\, songs invented in the shower\, professional jargon\, “Witness Wanted” signs\, technical manuals\, and text-message typos to assemble verbal collages that raise more questions than they answer. In settings ranging from Montreal’s Mile End to a commercial flight above the Midwest to a wildfire in the mountains of British Columbia\, these are poems rooted in workingclass Canadian experience\, poems that flirt with both safety and danger\, that drone on like drunken strangers in a bar. \nNothing Could be Further from the Truth by Christopher Evans \nIn stories both absurd and all-too-real\, Christopher Evans paints a portrait of the uncanniness of modern life. \nThe president of a holistic dog food company is haunted by a pop song from her past. Nine siblings band together to raise themselves after parental abandonment. A domestic argument reveals a woman’s supernatural gift. A failing musician finds his calling soundtracking another man’s life. \nChristopher Evans’s stories are people with strays ― those who fall for the allure of nostalgia\, grapple with male fragility\, deny family trauma\, and acquiesce to authority. For these characters\, resignation and reinvention are only a breath apart. \nAbout the authors \nMolly 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 at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. \nSelina Boan is a white settler-nehiyaw (Cree) writer living on the traditional\, unceded territories of thexʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam)\, səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh)\, and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples. Her debut poetry collection\, Undoing Hours\, was published in Spring 2021 by Nightwood Editions which won the 2022 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry in English. Her work has been published widely\, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She is a poetry editor for CV2. \nShaun Robinson’s first book\, If You Discover a Fire\, was published by Brick Books in 2020. His poems have appeared in The Walrus\, The Malahat Review\, Arc Poetry and The Best Canadian Poetry 2019. He lives in Vancouver and is a citizen of the Metis Nation of British Columbia. \nChristopher Evans is a writer and editor\, originally from the lands of the Lkwungen People\, on the traditional territories of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations\, in Victoria\, BC. Chris is a former editor for PRISM international magazine and currently teaches creative writing to children. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies\, including Maisonneuve\, EVENT\, and Best Canadian Poetry\, and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His debut short story collection Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth was published by House of Anansi in 2022.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/did-you-miss-me-a-recent-release-reading/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230722
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230725
DTSTAMP:20260501T045029
CREATED:20230327T210056Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230327T210056Z
UID:16188-1689991200-1690163999@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:WORKSHOP: Writing the Body\, Writing the Land
DESCRIPTION:This two-day writing workshop explores participants’ rich and diverse connections to the lands they carry with them. All people hold powerful stories of land\, whether those are narratives of lifelong connection to one landscape\, or stories of places left behind and new places gained as immigrants\, refugees\, and displaced peoples. \nWorking in collaboration with the beautiful Shawnigan Lake School campus\, participants will walk the grounds together\, delving into snippets of essential anchoring texts along the way from diverse writers such as Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer\, Robert Macfarlane\, Dr. Rita Wong\, and more. \nTogether\, participating writers will seek different ways to move through and sit deeply with place\, and come together to craft\, share\, and discuss the stories of the lands they carry in their bones. Specific land-based exercises and suggestions for further reading will leave everyone with inspiration for additional writing after the workshop itself has ended. \nThoughtful accommodation will be made for participants living and working with mobility concerns.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/workshop-writing-the-body-writing-the-land/
LOCATION:BC
CATEGORIES:Workshop
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230720T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230720T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045029
CREATED:20230712T211530Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211530Z
UID:17494-1689876000-1689883200@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong with Guests
DESCRIPTION:On Thursday\, July 20th\, at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books and Tin House for the West Coast launch of Jane Wong’s “blazing\, lyrical” memoir\, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City. Jane will be joined by guest readers Britt McGillivray and Adèle Barclay. \nIn what Elissa Washuta calls “a perfect and glimmering book”\, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class\, a portrait of how we become who we are\, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the Book: \nMeet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (TinHouse\, 2023) \nAn incandescent\, exquisitely written memoir about family\, food\, girlhood\, resistance\, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore. \nIn the late 1980s on the Jersey shore\, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family’s Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch\, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice\, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. Jane is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream\, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City’s promise lies her father’s gambling addiction\, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant. \nIn her debut memoir\, Jane Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City\, one that resists a single identity\, a single story as she writes about making do with what you have—and what you don’t. What does it mean\, she asks\, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability—and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places\, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class\, a portrait of how we become who we are\, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share. \nAbout the Author: \nJane Wong is the author of a memoir\, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House\, 2023)\, and two collections of poetry: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James\, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books\, 2016). She is an associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University and lives in Seattle. \nWith Guest Readers: \nBritt McGillivray is a poet\, editor\, and non-fiction writer from the Pacific Northwest. Born in Vancouver\, BC (unceded territory of the Tsleil-Waututh\, Squamish\, and Musqueam Nations)\, they run writing retreats on Orcas Island\, WA\, and spend their time between Vancouver and Seattle. Britt is finishing their first novel. \nAdèle Barclay’s (she/they) poetry\, fiction\, and essays have appeared in The Walrus\, The Tyee\, The Pinch\, Heavy Feather Review\, glitterMOB\, PRISM\, Cosmonauts Avenue and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2016 Lit POP Award\, The Walrus’ 2016 Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry and The Fiddlehead’s 2022 Fiction Prize. Their debut poetry collection\, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You won the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection\, Renaissance Normcore was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the ReLit Award and placed third for the 2020 Fred Cogswell Award. Excerpts from their memoir-in-progress Black Cherry have been published in Impact: Women Writing After Concussion\, This Magazine\, and The Puritan and have been nominated for creative nonfiction prizes by The Fiddlehead and The Malahat.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/meet-me-tonight-in-atlantic-city-by-jane-wong-with-guests/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230719T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230719T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045029
CREATED:20230712T211514Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211514Z
UID:17491-1689789600-1689796800@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:A History of Burning by Janika Oza in conversation with Brandon Wint
DESCRIPTION:On Wednesday\, July 19th\, at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books and Penguin Random House Canada for the West Coast launch of Janika Oza’s A History of Burning. \nIn what the New York Times Book Review calls “Remarkable. . . . A haunting\, symphonic tale”\, Oza’s A History of Burning is a profoundly moving debut novel spanning India\, Uganda\, England\, and Canada\, about how one act of survival reverberates across generations of a family and their search for a place of their own. \nJoin her in conversation with poet Brandon Wint at Massy Arts Society for this special event. \nRegistration is free or by donation\, however you can pay $30 for a signed copy of A History is Burning when you register. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free and required for entrance. \nThe gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the book \nA History of Burning (McLelland & Stewart\, 2023) \nFour generations. Three sisters. One impossible choice. A profoundly moving debut novel spanning India\, Uganda\, England\, and Canada\, about how one act of survival reverberates across generations of a family and their search for a place of their own. Named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Pick\, and a most anticipated book of 2023 by the Toronto Star\, the Globe and Mail\, OprahDaily\, and Goodreads. \nIndia\, 1898. Pirbhai is the thirteen-year-old breadwinner for his family when he steps into a dhow on the promise of work\, only to be taken across the ocean to labour on the East African Railway for the British. With no money or voice but a strong will to survive\, he makes an impossible choice that will haunt him for the rest of his days and reverberate across generations. \nPirbhai’s children go on to thrive in Uganda during the waning days of British colonial rule. As the country moves towards independence and military dictatorship\, Pirbhai’s granddaughters—sisters Latika\, Mayuri\, and Kiya—come of age in a divided nation\, each forging her own path for the future. Latika is an aspiring journalist with a fierce determination to fight for what she believes in. Mayuri’s ambitions will take her farther away from her family than she ever imagined. And fearless Kiya will have to bear the weight of their secrets. \nForced to flee Uganda during Idi Amin’s brutal expulsion of South Asians in 1972\, the family must start their lives over again in Toronto. Then one day news arrives that makes each generation question how far they are willing to go\, and who they are willing to defy\, to secure a place of their own in the world. \nA masterful and breathtakingly intimate saga of colonialism and exile\, complicity and resistance\, A History of Burning is a radiant debut about the stories our families choose to share—and those that remain unspoken. \nAbout the author \nJANIKA OZA is the winner of the 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction and the 2020 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Award. She has received support from The Millay Colony\, Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops\, VONA/Voices of Our Nation\, and the One Story Summer Writers’ Conference\, and her stories and essays have appeared in publications such as The Best Small Fictions 2019 Anthology\, Catapult\, The Adroit Journal\, and The Cincinnati Review\, among others. A chapter of A History of Burning was longlisted for the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize and published in Prairie Schooner. She lives in Toronto. \nWith host: \nBrandon Wint is a poet\, spoken word artist\, educator and emerging musician based in western Canada. For more than a decade\, Brandon has been a sought-after touring performer\, educator and collaborator. He has shared his work internationally\, including in festivals and showcases in Latvia\, Lithuania\, Australia and Jamaica. His poetry has also been published in Ex-Puritan\, Arc Poetry Magazine and Write Magazine\, among others. He is currently the artistic director of Tree Reading Series. His debut collection of poetry is Divine Animal (Write Bloody North\, 2020).
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/a-history-of-burning-by-janika-oza-in-conversation-with-brandon-wint/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/burning.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230718T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230718T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045029
CREATED:20230712T211451Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211451Z
UID:17488-1689703200-1689710400@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Double Launch: PRISM International: Issues 61.2 (SPRING) & 61.3 (IBPOC)
DESCRIPTION:On Tues. July 18th at 6pm\, join Massy Arts and PRISM international for the launch of two issues: 61.2 (SPRING) and 61.3 (IBPOC). \n61.2 (SPRING) is haunted by fleeting moments of recognition and sticky moments of queer desire. 61.3 is PRISM international’s first entirely IBPOC issue. The poems and stories in this issue explore what goes unsaid between generations\, magic\, and the transformational power of asking “what-if”. Looking at these two issues side by side\, they represent what PRISM hopes to do: publish the best contemporary writing. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free\, open to all 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. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan\, visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the readers: \nNadia Froese is a poetry and fiction writer from the unceded territories of the Musqueam\, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver). Her writing has previously appeared in Phoebe\, Bat City Review and The Temz Review. Her debut chapbook of poetry\, Something Spectacular\, was published by 845 Press in 2021. Link to book: https://www.thetemzreview.com/store/p30/Something_Spectacular.html \nCatherine Lewis is a Vancouver-based Chinese Canadian writer. Her chap- book Zipless (845 Press\, 2021) was a Bisexual Book Awards finalist. Her work has been published in The Humber Literary Review\, is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead\, and was shortlisted in contests at Room Magazine and Pulp Literature. Link to book: https://www.catherinewriter.com/zipless/ \nKathy Mak’s debut chapbook\, Another Day\, is published by 845 Press (2020). Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared/are forthcoming in The/tƐmz/Review\, Marías at Sampaguitas\, Kissing Dynamite\, This Magazine\, Understorey Magazine\, Canthius\, The Malahat Review\, and What You Need to Know About Me Anthology. She creates to capture fleeting moments of life and to reflect on her experiences. Visit her website: kathymak.weebly.com \nAbout PRISM international \nPRISM international is a quarterly magazine out of Vancouver\, British Columbia\, whose office is located on the traditional\, ancestral\, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people. Our mandate is to publish the best in contemporary writing and translation from Canada and around the world. Writing from PRISM has been featured in Best American Stories\, Best American Essays and The Journey Prize Stories\, amongst other noted publications. \nThe mandate of the magazine’s website is to provide a supplement to the print edition that connects readers with the literary community through author interviews\, book reviews\, news about Canadian writing and publishing events\, and other information of interest to our readers\, many of whom are writers themselves.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/double-launch-prism-international-issues-61-2-spring-61-3-ibpoc/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230717T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230717T200000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045029
CREATED:20230712T211347Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211347Z
UID:17484-1689616800-1689624000@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:An Evening with Finalists of the 2023 BC and Yukon Book Prizes
DESCRIPTION:On Monday\, July 17th at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Massy Books\, and BC and Yukon Book Prizes for a literary evening with three finalists of the 2023 BC and Yukon Book Prizes: Tsering Yangzom Lama\, Harrison Mooney\, and Cecily Nicholson. \nThe in-person event will feature readings of the We Measure the Earth with our Bodies (McLelland and Stewart\, 2022)\, Invisible Boy (HarperCollins 2022)\, and Harrowings (Talonbooks\, 2022) followed by a Q&A session with the audience. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery\, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown\, Vancouver. \nRegistration is free\, open to all 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. \nFor more on accessibility including parking\, seating\, venue measurements and floor plan or to request ASL interpretation\, visit: massyarts.com/accessibility \nCovid 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. \nAbout the books and authors \nWe Measure the Earth with Our Bodies For readers of Homegoing and The Boat People\, a compelling and profound debut novel about a Tibetan family’s journey through exile. \nIn the wake of China’s invasion of Tibet throughout the 1950s\, Lhamo and her sister\, Tenkyi\, arrive at a refugee camp on the border of Nepal\, having survived the dangerous journey across the Himalayas into exile when so many others did not. As Lhamo—haunted by the loss of her homeland and her mother\, the village oracle—tries to rebuild a life amid a shattered community\, hope arrives in the form of a young man named Samphel and his uncle\, who brings with him the ancient statue of the Nameless Saint\, a relic long rumoured to vanish and reappear in times of need. \nDecades later\, the sisters are separated\, and Tenkyi is living with Lhamo’s daughter\, Dolma\, in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood. While Tenkyi works as a cleaner and struggles with traumatic memories\, Dolma vies for a place as a scholar of Tibetan Studies. But when Dolma comes across the Nameless Saint in a collector’s vault\, she must decide what she is willing to do for her community\, even if it means risking her dreams. \nBreathtaking in scope and powerfully intimate\, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is a gorgeously written meditation on colonization\, displacement\, and the lengths we’ll go to remain connected to our families and ancestral lands. Told through the lives of four people over fifty years\, this beautifully lyrical debut novel provides a nuanced portrait of the world of Tibetan exiles. \nTsering Yangzom Lama holds a BA in creative writing and international relations from the University of British Columbia\, and an MFA from Columbia University. Born and raised in Nepal\, Lama has lived in Toronto\, New York City\, and Vancouver\, where she now resides. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is her first novel\, and it was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize\, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize\, the Toronto Book Award\, and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. \nInvisible Boy A narrative that amplifies a voice rarely heard—that of the child at the centre of a transracial adoption—and a searing account of being raised by religious fundamentalists \nHarrison Mooney was born to a West African mother and adopted as an infant by a white evangelical family. Growing up as a Black child\, Harry’s racial identity is mocked and derided\, while at the same time he is made to participate in the fervour of his family’s revivalist church. Confused and crushed by fundamentalist dogma and consistently abused for his colour\, Harry must transition from child to young adult while navigating and surviving zealotry\, paranoia and prejudice. \nAfter years of internalized anti-Blackness\, Harry begins to redefine his terms and reconsider his history. His journey from white cult to Black consciousness culminates in a moving reunion with his biological mother\, who waited twenty-five years for the chance to tell her son the truth: she wanted to keep him. \nThis powerful memoir considers the controversial practice of transracial adoption from the perspective of families that are torn apart and children who are stripped of their culture\, all in order to fill evangelical communities’ demand for babies. Throughout this most timely tale of race\, religion and displacement\, Harrison Mooney’s wry\, evocative prose renders his deeply personal tale of identity accessible and light\, giving us a Black coming-of-age narrative set in a world with little love for Black children. \nHarrison Mooney is a writer and journalist. Born to a West African immigrant mother\, he was adopted as an infant by a white family and raised in the Bible belt of British Columbia. He has worked for the Vancouver Sun for nearly a decade as a reporter\, an editor and a columnist. His writing has also appeared in the National Post\, the Guardian\, Yahoo and Maclean’s. Harrison Mooney lives in East Vancouver with his family. \nHARROWINGS takes place mainly in the rural and reconnects with a history of Black intellectual and artistic history in relation to agriculture. The poems include pulses of memoir from the poet’s childhood growing up in the country on a farm. These experiences connect to her volunteer work during the recent pandemic\, on a local “prison farm” – an agricultural enterprise whose leadership includes people who were formerly incarcerated. Considering movements organizing for food security\, and related\, resurgent practices\, HARROWINGS addresses the work of cultivation. Underlying references include almanacs and Anglo idioms\, drawing upon tabular information\, weather\, and the workings of the sun\, moon\, and points of stars as may be practical in relation to a localized\, growing year. The poems refuse the romance of husbandry\, cultivation\, and predictive customs. Understanding “the farm” as a tract of colonial advance – tropes of charming and white\, tradition and supremacy\, are confronted in a study of biome\, water\, soil\, and seed. With love\, despite episodic and chronic illness\, duress\, and dissociative relationships to time – the poetry advances by way of practical tasks such as watering\, weeding\, and sowing toward abolitionist futures. \nCecily Nicholson is from rural\, small-town Ontario via Toronto and South Bend\, relocated to the Pacific Coast now almost two decades. On Musqueam-\, Squamish-\, and Tsleil-Waututh-occupied lands known as Vancouver\, she worked for many years in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. A part of the Joint Effort prison abolitionist group and a member of the Research Ethics Board for Emily Carr University of Art and Design\, Cecily was also the 2017 Ellen Warren Tallman Writer in Residence at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of Triage\, From the Poplars\, winner of the 2015 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize\, and Wayside Sang\, winner of the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for English-Language Poetry.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/an-evening-with-finalists-of-the-2023-bc-and-yukon-book-prizes/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230713T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20230713T193000
DTSTAMP:20260501T045029
CREATED:20230712T211322Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230712T211322Z
UID:17481-1689271200-1689276600@www.readlocalbc.ca
SUMMARY:Jenn Ashton & Heige Boehm: An Exploration of Reconciliation through Story
DESCRIPTION:On Thursday\, July 13 at 6pm\, join Massy Arts\, Tidewater Press and Ronsdale Press in welcoming Jenn Ashton & Heige Boehm for “An Exploration of Reconciliation through Story.” \nLocal Historian and author Jenn Ashton and historical fiction author Heige Boehm delve into past global atrocities to shed light on how reconciliation can be advanced into actionable solutions. Through family accounts and storytelling\, Ashton and Boehm connect cultural histories for answers. \nThis project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada. \nVenue & Accessibility \nThe event will be hosted online on zoom. Registration is free\, open to all and required for entrance. \nAbout The Authors \nJenn Ashton is a Squamish First Nations Artist\, Filmmaker\, Local Historian\, and Author of People Like Frank and Other Stories from the Edge of Normal (Tidewater Press 2020). She studies history at Oxford University and has recently completed work for Penguin Random House USA and David Grann on the next print edition of Killers of the Flower Moon. She is a graduate of The Writers’ Studio at Simon Fraser University and is currently working on a screenplay for her anthology series White Blotter High. https://linktr.ee/jennashton \nHeige Boehm is a historical fiction writer and the Author of Secrets in the Shadows (Ronsdale Press\, 2020). She holds a Creative Writing Certificate from The Writers’ Studio of Simon Fraser University\, Liberal Arts for 55+ Certificate from Simon Fraser University. A Certified Guided Autobiography Instructor from The Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies. Heige hosts A Writer’s Life podcast and is the founder and writing guide instructor for the Crow Story House writing workshops. She is deep into editing her second novel Black Earth. https://linktr.ee/heigeboehm \nAbout the books (click on link to purchase) \nPeople Like Frank and other stories from the edge of normal A young woman in a group home investigates a mysterious piece of knitting. An obsessed bag boy does grim battle with a squirrel. A woman\, an asparagus bag and a garbageman have a tumultuous short-term relationship. In the tradition of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- time\, Room and If I Fall\, If I Die\, this uplifting collection explores the world through the eyes of protagonists whose perspectives are informed by their unique circumstances. Some are struggling with physical challenges while others seek to overcome psychological barriers. Far from being defined by their limitations\, these characters revel in achievements others take for granted and find wonder in unexpected places. By celebrating the private triumphs of people who are all too often dismissed\, Ashton reminds us all of our own humanity. \nSecrets in the Shadows tells the story of best friends\, Michael and Wolfie\, who are caught up in the fanatical enthusiasm of the Third Reich’s ideology in the 1930s. Their safe world turns upside down when Michael and Wolfie accidentally kill one of their own. When Michael turns sixteen\, and his father orders him to volunteer with the Waffen-SS. Wolfie joins him. Assigned to the Hitlerjugend 12th SS Panzer Division\, they cope with the horrors of war\, trying to keep one another alive on the battlefields. Their lives unravel\, and as one secret is exposed\, another is born. When the final showdown begins\, not only do they find themselves in Berlin with the Russians just blocks away\, but Michael and Wolfie confront the secrets that lie in the shadows of the past.
URL:https://www.readlocalbc.ca/event/jenn-ashton-heige-boehm-an-exploration-of-reconciliation-through-story/
LOCATION:Massy Arts\, 23 East Pender\, Vancouver\, B.C.\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Launch,Panel
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