Read Local BC

Sonnets from a Cell by Bradley Peters with Guests
2023-10-13 18:00 (America/Vancouver) | BC
On Friday, October 13th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Brick Books in launching Bradley Peters’ Sonnets from a Cell. Bradley will be joined by Rob Taylor, Kayla Czaga, Marc Perez, Nick Thran, and host, Sheryda Warrener.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book:
Sonnets from a Cell (Brick Books, 2023)
Poems for and about the incarcerated.
Moving from riots to mall parkades to church, the poems in Bradley Peters’ debut Sonnets from a Cell mix inmate speech, prison psychology, skateboard slang and contemporary lyricism in a way that is tough and tender, that is accountable both to Peters’ own days “caught between the past and nothing” and to the structures that sentence so many “to lose.” Written behind doors our culture too often keeps closed, this is poetry reaching out for moments of longing, wild joy and grace.
Drawing on his own experiences as a teenager and young adult in and out of the Canadian prison system, Peters has written both a personal reckoning and a damning and eloquent account of our violence- and enforcement-obsessed capitalist and patriarchal cultures.
About the author:
Bradley Peters is a poet, actor, and carpenter from Mission, BC. His poetry has been published in numerous literary magazines, has been shortlisted for The Fiddlehead‘s Ralph Gustafson Award, has twice been the runner-up for Subterrain‘s Lush Triumphant Award, and in 2019 placed first in Grain Magazine‘s Short Grain contest. Sonnets from a Cell is his first book.
About the host:
Sheryda Warrener is a poet and teacher, most recently the author of Test Piece (Coach House Books, 2022). Her work has been published in the Malahat Review, Maisonneuve, Hazlitt, The Believer, among other journals. A recipient of the Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for poetry and a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, she teaches poetry and interdisciplinary forms in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
About the readers:
Rob Taylor is the author of four poetry collections, including The News (Gaspereau Press, 2016) and Strangers (Biblioasis, 2021). His fifth collection, Weather, will be published by Gaspereau Press in Spring 2024. He lives in Port Moody, on the unceded territory of the Tsleil-Waututh and Kwikwetlem peoples, and teaches creative writing at SFU and UFV, where he gets to work with talented writers who sometimes – like tonight! – go on to do great things.
Kayla Czaga is the author For Your Safety Please Hold On and Dunk Tank, which were both nominated for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Often anthologized in the Best Canadian Poetry in English series, her work also appears in PRISM International, The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. Her third collection, Midway, will be released by House of Anansi in 2024.
Marc Perez is the author of the chapbook, Borderlands (Anstruther Press, 2020), and the full-length collection, Dayo (Brick Books, Spring 2024). His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Fiddlehead, EVENT, decomp journal, CV2, PRISM international, among others. His poems are also forthcoming in Magdaragat: an Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing (Cormorant Press, 2023). Born and raised in Manila, he lives with his wife and two children in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
Nick Thran is the author of three collections of poems. His second collection, Earworm (Nightwood Editions, 2011), won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. After stops in Toronto, Victoria, New York, Calgary, Madrid and Montreal, he now lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik, where, in addition to writing, he works as an editor and bookseller.

Reuniting with Strangers by Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio with Guests
2023-10-12 18:00 | BC
On Thursday, October 12th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Douglas & McIntyre in celebrating the launch of Reuniting with Strangers, a novel by Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio. Jennilee will be joined by Kawika Guillermo, Leah Ranada, Vincent Ternida, and Christine Añonuevo.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the author:
Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio’s work as a school board consultant, researcher, journalist, Little Manila tour guide, and settlement worker led to her novel, Reuniting with Strangers. As the founder of Filipino Talks, she builds bridges between Canadian educators and Filipino families. Her stories have been published in Geist, TAYO Literary Magazine, Changing the Face of Canadian Literature, and Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing. She was a finalist for the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Authors Award. As a founding member of Pluma, a collective of Toronto-based Filipino writers, she loves launches that are a celebration of multiple Filipino-Canadian books!
Her favourite Tagalog word is “kwan” because it’s a brilliant filler for many words!
About the host:
Kawika Guillermo is an award-winning author of two novels and the just-released prose-poetry book, Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir (2023). Under his patrilineal name, Christopher Patterson, he is an Associate Professor in UBC’s Social Justice Institute, and is the author of the nonfiction books Transitive Cultures and Open World Empire.
His favourite Filipino word is “pogi” because someone called him that once and it made his day.
About the readers:
Leah Ranada’s stories have been published in On Spec, Room Magazine, Santa Ana River Review, emerge 2013, and elsewhere. Her writing is informed by her childhood in Metro Manila and eventual move to Vancouver in 2006, where she made writing her permanent home.
In 2013, she attended The Writer’s Studio (TWS) at SFU. She released her debut novel, The Cine Star Salon (NeWest Press), in 2021. She is honoured to have her work included in Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing.
Her favourite Tagalog word is “kilig” (a shiver of pleasure) which has no translatable word in English.
Vincent Ternida is the author of the novella The Seven Muses of Harry Salcedo. His essays, articles, and poetry have appeared in several publications including The Polyglot, The British Columbia Review, rabble.ca, Rappler, Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, and PR&TA Journal. Acacia, a short story he developed in Diaspora Dialogues has been selected in Magdaragat: An Anthology Filipino-Canadian Writing; published by Cormorant Books in 2023. He lives in Vancouver.
His favorite Filipino phrase is “Bahala Na”. Reframing the usual dismissive usage for said term, he sees it more as an absurdist rebellion against late stage capitalism’s kafkaesque rules and mores we mindlessly adhere to everyday; wherein he can just say “Bahala Na”, do the said activity anyway, throwing all of his faith to either, knowing that everything will be just fine.
Christine Añonuevo is a writer, community organizer & PhD candidate in Human and Health Sciences at the University of Northern British Columbia. Christine dwells in South Hazelton on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Gitxsan nation. She enjoys long walks with her dog Ruckus along the Skeena river. Her favourite pastime is prying her kids away from their electronic devices to teach them how to write cursive, read analogue watches and identify constellations.
She loves the Tagalog word “tadhana” because it evokes our relationship with the cosmos.

Whistler Writers Festival
2023-10-12 09:00 - 2023-10-15 16:00 | Fairmont Chateau Whistler, 4599 Chateau Blvd, Whistler, Canada
The annual Whistler Writers Festival is Oct. 12 to 15, 2023 in Whistler. Hear the newest, enthralling works from favourite local, Canadian, and international authors, connect with literary agents and publishers, take workshops, and enjoy live music. Select events available online. Visit whistlerwritersfest.com for the latest information & tickets. Tickets on sale August 21, 2023. #WhistlerWritersFest

Victoria Festival of Authors
2023-10-11 19:00 - 2023-10-15 21:30 | Langham Court Theatre, 805 Langham Court, Victoria, BC, V8V 4J3, Canada
Since 2016, Victoria Festival of Authors (VFA) has been the largest celebration of books and book lovers on Vancouver Island. Each fall we invite authors from our region and beyond to share their books and ideas with Victoria’s readers. We showcase established and emerging poets, prose writers, and other storytellers, with artistic achievement, creative innovation and a diversity of voices driving our mandate. Our traditional five-day festival includes author readings, discussion panels and workshops. Since 2021, VFA has been a hybrid festival, with in-person and virtual-only events. Most of our in-person events are livestreamed, with recordings available on VFA’s YouTube channel.
This year VFA is focused on accessibility and inclusion; we are addressing all barriers to participation, including financial barriers. As such, tickets for all virtual events and most in-person events will have sliding-scale pricing, with a “no fee” option. All events will be captioned, with ASL translation upon request.

River Meets the Sea by Rachael Moorthy with guest Harrison Mooney
2023-10-11 18:00 | BC
On Wednesday, October 11th, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and House of Anansi Press in celebrating Rachael Moorthy’s debut novel, River Meets the Sea. Rachael will be joined by guest reader Invisible Boy author Harrison Mooney.
“Brilliant and inventive, River Meets the Sea is elegantly told in heartrending poetry, flowing smoothly between the protagonists’ histories, the forces that propel them, and their inevitable meeting.” —FRANCESCA EKWUYASI, AUTHOR OF BUTTER HONEY PIG BREAD
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book:
River Meets the Sea (House of Anansi Press, 2023)
An enthralling nautical epic, River Meets the Sea traces the dual timelines of two men with displaced Indigenous identity: a white-passing foster child in 1940s Vancouver and a teenage immigrant in the suburbs of Nanaimo who is racially coded as Black in the 1970s.
A natural-born storyteller, Ronny is a left-handed “alley mutt” without a birth certificate who searches for his mother everywhere — most powerfully, he hears her voice in the surging Stó:lō River. Born in the middle of the ocean on a merchant ship departing Ceylon, Chandra is a dark-skinned Dravidian boy with complicated roots and who finds his haven from his colourist mother and the pressure to assimilate by swimming and surfing in the Salish Sea.
Moving gracefully between these parallel stories like a wave, the novel traces the seemingly separate lives of these sensitive young men, their displaced Indigenous identities, and their everlasting connections to water. When their troubled paths inevitably cross, they form a sacred bond based on the mutual understanding of what it means to be othered, illuminating the interconnectedness of humanity and our innate relationship with the natural world.
About the author:
Rachael Moorthy is a storyteller of all trades from the Salish Sea to Switzerland. She grew up identifying the way the world told her to: half Black, half white, because including the complexity of her diasporic and displaced Indigenous roots often took too much breath. Today she exists in a perpetual state of Mixed Girl Blues. Her debut novel, River Meets the Sea, featured on CBC’s Canadian Fiction to Read in 2023 list and Capsule Stories Most Anticipated Books of 2023, follows the seemingly separate timelines of two young men with displaced Indigenous roots: one coded as Black, one white-passing, until their lives ultimately intersect on the sequoia-lined Salish Coast. Her writing was short-listed for The Malahat Review’s 2020 Far Horizon Award and has appeared in publications such as PRISM, SAD Mag, and TSOW.
About the guest reader:
Harrison Mooney, Invisible Boy (HarperCollins, 2022) 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.

Reconciliation Reading Series (#6): “Birdie”
2023-10-11 12:00 - 14:00 | Trinity Memorial United Church, Abbotsford, 33737 George Ferguson Way, Abbotsford, British Columbia, V2S 2M4, Canada
Spiritual Path to Awakening (SPA) is proud to offer Julia Rohan’s Reconciliation Reading Series, as an opportunity for learning and dialogue related to reconciliation. SPA takes pride in our commitment to making Indigenous Knowledge and Truth and Reconciliation an integral part of our event culture. This Reconciliation Reading Series is the seventh Active Allyship Event.
The sixth Reconciliation Reading Series will take place over 3-consecutive weeks in October 2023 and focus on “Birdie” by Tracey Lindberg.
Additional details and registration can be found on our website: https://abbyspa.com/collections/programming/products/reconciliation-reading-series-6-birdie

“And So To Tenderness I Add My Action”: Illness, Disability, & Poetry
2023-10-10 18:00 | BC
On Tuesday, October 10th at 6pm, join Massy Arts and Massy Books in welcoming Steffi Tad-y, Kess Mohammadi, and Jody Chan for an online poetry event around the topics of tenderness and disability.
Venue & Accessibility
This event will be held on ZOOM at 6pm Pacific Time.
Closed captioning is available through ZOOM.
This event is free but registration is required.
About the authors:
Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, Steffi Tad-y (she/her) is a poet & writer based in the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, & Tsleil-Waututh Nations, also known as Vancouver, British Columbia. Her chapbook of poems Merienda published by Rahila’s Ghost Press was nominated for the 2021 bpNichol Chapbook Award. In 2022, she published her debut book of poetry From the Shoreline with Gordon Hill Press. Steffi’s poems often reflect on kinship, diasporic geographies, & formations of the mind.
Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi (They/Them) is a queer, Iranian born, Toronto-based Poet, Writer and Translator. They were shortlisted for the 2021 Austin Clarke poetry prize, 2022’s Arc Poem of the year award, The Malahat Review’s 2023 Open Season awards for poetry and they are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Prize. They are the author of four poetry chapbooks and three translated poetry chapbooks. They have released two full-length collections of poetry with Gordon Hill Press. Their full-length collaborative poetry manuscript “G” is forthcoming with Palimpsest press Fall 2023, and their full-length collection of experimental dream-poems “Daffod*ls” is forthcoming from Pamenar Press Fall 2023.
Jody Chan (they/them) is a writer, drummer, therapist, and organizer based in Toronto/Tkaronto. Their writing explores themes of home, belonging, kinship, queerness, and Madness/disability. They are the author of haunt (Damaged Goods Press), all our futures (PANK), and sick (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2018 St. Lawrence Book Award and 2021 Trillium Award for Poetry. They are also a performing member of Raging Asian Womxn Taiko Drummers (RAW). Their work has received fellowships and support from VONA, Tin House, Feminist Art Collective (FAC), Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.

An Afternoon with Claire G. Coleman
2023-10-08 14:00 - 17:00 | BC
On Sunday, October 8th at 2pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Emily Carr University of Art and Design in welcoming bestselling and award-winning author Claire G. Coleman.
“Coleman’s targets in Enclave are clear: racism, homophobia, transphobia, inequality – all enabled, amplified, by an atomised, consumerist society. … ‘Aboriginal people live in a dystopia every day,’ Coleman told the Guardian in 2017; as she wrote in Lies, Damned Lies, ‘the apocalypse is not coming, the apocalypse has begun.'” — The Guardian
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the author:
Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral country is on the south coast of Western Australia. Born in Perth she has spent most of her life in Naarm. She writes fiction, non-fiction and verse and has been extensively published.
Her debut novel Terra Nullius was published by Hachette in Australia and Small Beer in the US and was listed for over 15 awards. The Old Lie (Hachette 2019) is her second novel. Lies Damned Lies: A Personal Exploration of the Impact of Colonisation, her first nonfiction book, was published in September 2021 by Ultimo Press and won the 2022 University of Queensland Non Fiction Award. Enclave (Hachette 2022), her third novel, was long listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
About the moderator:
(coming soon)
About the books:
Terra Nullius (Small Beer Press, 2018)
Terra Nullius (def): land belonging to no one; no man’s land
“Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from. Jacky was running.”
The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to bring peace to their new home, and they have a plan for how to achieve it. They will tear Native families apart and provide re-education to those who do not understand why they should submit to their betters.
Peace and prosperity are worth any price, but who will pay it? This rich land, Australia, will provide for all if only the Natives can learn their place.
Jacky has escaped the Home where the Settlers sent him, but where will he go? The Head of the Department for the Protection of Natives, known to Settlers and Natives alike as the Devil, is chasing Jacky. And when the Devil catches him, Sister Bagra, who knows her duty to the ungodly, will be waiting for Jacky back at Home.
An incendiary, timely, and fantastical debut from an essential Australian Aboriginal writer, Claire G. Coleman.
Do you recognize this story? Look again.
This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history books. This Terra Nullius —shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize and Highly Commended for the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards — is something new, but all too familiar.
Enclave (Hatchette Australia, 2023)
‘These are troubling times. The world is a dangerous place,’ the voice of the Chairman said. ‘I can continue to assure you of this: within the Wall you are perfectly safe.’
Christine could not sleep, she could not wake, she could not think. She stared, half-blind, at the cold screen of her smartphone. She was told the Agency was keeping them safe from the dangers outside, an outside world she would never see.
She never imagined questioning what she was told, what she was allowed to know, what she was permitted to think. She never even thought there were questions to ask.
The enclave was the only world she knew, the world outside was not safe. Staying or leaving was not a choice she had the power to make. But then Christine dared start thinking . . . and from that moment, danger was everywhere.
In our turbulent times, Claire G. Coleman’s Enclave is a powerful dystopian allegory that confronts the ugly realities of racism, homophobia, surveillance, greed and privilege and the self-destructive distortions that occur when we ignore our shared humanity.
_____
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Daddy Lessons by Steacy Easton with host Andrea Warner
2023-10-07 08:00 - 17:00 | BC
On Saturday, October 7th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Coach House Books for the Vancouver launch of Daddy Lessons by Steacy Easton with host Andrea Warner.
Part memoir, part literary study, part formalist exercise in excitement, Daddy Lessons is a transgressive text of pleasure, bodies, the Lord, and the West.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book:
Daddy Lessons (Coach House Books, 2023)
In this post-gender, post-sexuality, queer prairie Decameron, Steacy Easton’s sexual anxiety becomes textual anxiety. This is a messy history of Mormon missionaries, bathhouses, Anglican boarding schools, the back rooms of prairie bars, Montreal classrooms, and the many religious spaces that have tried to snuff out queer desire while turning a blind eye to abuse. These are provocative tales to turn on, offend, and sentimentalize. Easton explores the seminal texts of their sexuality, from Frank O’Hara to Neil LaBute, Kip Moore to Lorelei James, and delves into their own encounters as they came of age. These daddy lessons are blunt about the ambivalences of trauma and the pleasures of disobedience, slippery and difficult, reveling in the funk of memory and desire.
About the author:
Steacy Easton is a writer and visual artist, originally from Edmonton, who has lived in Hamilton for more than seven years. They have written on gender, sexuality, and country music for publications including Slate, NPR, and the Atlantic Online. Their upcoming books include Why Tammy Wynette Matters for University of Texas and a 33 1⁄3 Volume for Bloomsbury. They were the 2022 Martha Street Artist Residence in Winnipeg.
About the host:
Andrea Warner writes and talks. A lot. She’s the author of 2023’s Rise Up and Sing! Power, Protest, and Activism in Music, 2018’s Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography, and co-wrote the 2022 documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On. Andrea is a settler who was born and raised in Vancouver on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
____
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Becoming a Matriarch by Helen Knott with Jónína Kirton
2023-10-06 18:00 | BC
RELAUNCHED WITH NEW DATE:
On Friday, October 6th at 6:00pm, join Massy Arts Society, Massy Books, the Museum of Vancouver, and Knopf Canada for the launch of Helen Knott’s Becoming a Matriarch with host Jónína Kirton.
“Becoming a Matriarch is a feast of remarkable, colourful, deep and profoundly raw storytelling. Helen Knott is one of the greatest Indigenous literary artists of our time.” —Brandi Morin, author of Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Registration is free/by donation, open to all and required for entrance.
Purchase Becoming a Matriarch at Massy Books in advance or in person at the event.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Museum of Vancouver’s Joyce Walley Room, 1100 Chestnut St, Vancouver, BC.
Registrants can enjoy free admission to the museum all day, at any time before the event [10am to 6pm]. Just show your ticket to the event at the front desk. To see which exhibitions are currently on view, check out this link: https://museumofvancouver.ca/current-exhibitions
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
Parking & Directions
The Museum of Vancouver website has detailed descriptions of how to reach the museum by bus, ferry, on foot or by car. Note that the MOV parking lot is an Easy park lot with Easy park rates and is strictly monitored by Easypark. A parking violation ticket can cost $80!
Please visit their site to find out how best to arrive.
About The Book:
Becoming a Matriarch (Knopf Canada, 2023)
When matriarchs begin to disappear, there is a choice to either step into the places they left behind, or to craft a new space.
Helen Knott’s debut memoir, In My Own Moccasins, wowed reviewers, award juries, and readers alike with its profoundly honest and moving account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, resilience, and survival. Now, in her highly anticipated second book, Knott returns with a chronicle of grief, love, and legacy.
Having lost both her mom and grandmother in just over six months, forced to navigate the fine lines between matriarchy, martyrdom, and codependency, Knott realizes she must let go, not just of the women who raised her, but of the woman she thought she was.
Woven into the pages are themes of mourning, sobriety through loss, and generational dreaming. Becoming a Matriarch is charted with poetic insights, sass, humour, and heart, taking the reader over the rivers and mountains of Dane Zaa territory in Northeastern British Columbia, along the cobbled streets of Antigua, Guatemala, and straight to the heart of what matriarchy truly means. This is a journey through pain, on the way to becoming.
About the author:
Helen Knott is a Dane Zaa, Cree, Metis and mixed Euro-descent woman from Prophet River First Nations living in Fort St. John, B.C. She is the author of the nationally best-selling book, In My Own Moccasins. Her second book, Becoming a Matriarch, has been released through Knopf Doubleday Publishing. Helen has a bachelor’s degree in social work and has worked in advocacy and wellness with Indigenous communities for almost a decade. Helen has pieces published ranging from poetry to academic articles that focus on the connection between violence against Indigenous lands and violence against Indigenous bodies. She is currently taking time to work on her third book, a fiction, whose story will be rooted in her peoples territory.
About the host:
Jónína Kirton, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet 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 graduated from the Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio in 2007. She released her first book, page as bone ~ ink as blood, in 2015 and 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, released in 2022, merges poetry and lyrical memoir to take us on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on her Métis family.

Furniture Music by Gail Scott with guest Cecily Nicholson
2023-10-05 18:00 | BC
On Thursday, October 5th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Wave Books for the Vancouver launch of Furniture Music by Gail Scott. Gail will be joined by HARROWINGS author Cecily Nicholson.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the books:
Furniture Music (Wave Books, 2023)
In Furniture Music, Montreal luminary Gail Scott chronicles her years in Lower Manhattan during the Obama era, in a community of poets at the junction between formally radical and political art. Immersing herself in a New York topography that includes St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the Bowery Poetry Club, Scott writes from a ‘Northern’ awareness that is both immediate and inquisitive, from Obama’s election to Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy. Here, readers are situated in conversations around citizenship, gender performance, class, race, feminism, and what it means to be writing now. Scott’s project is polyvocal, also resonating with the voices of a host of earlier writers and philosophers, notably, Gertrude Stein, Viktor Shklovsky, and Walter Benjamin. The result is a staggering work of insight and hope during a critical time in American politics and art.
Harrowings (Talonbooks, 2022)
Set mainly in the rural, HARROWINGS connects with Black intellectual and art history in relation to agriculture. The poems include pulses of memoir from the poet’s childhood growing up on a farm, as well as from more recent pandemic experiences volunteering for a local agricultural enterprise led by people who were formerly incarcerated. Considering movements organizing for food security and related, resurgent practices, HARROWINGS also contends with “the farm” as a tract of colonial advance. Tropes of tradition and supremacy are confronted in this study of biome, plants, and soil. Despite episodic and chronic illness, and by way of practical tasks such as sowing, pruning, and watering, the poetry advances with love towards abolitionist futures.
About the authors:
Gail Scott’s prose works are laboratories for concocting tales about cities across language/ genre/gender boundaries. Her 2021 poetics, Permanent Revolution, engaging with radical prose writers across the continent , was short-listed for Le Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. Other acclaimed city novels include The Obituary, a fractalled tale of suppressed diversity in post-millennial Québec, also a Grand Prix finalist; Heroine, about radical art and politics in turbulent 80s Montréal; and My Paris, about a sad diarist looking for a lost avant-garde in 90s Paris. Her translation of Michael Delisle’s Le désarroi du matelot was a Governor General finalist. She won major studio grants (Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec) for New York and Paris. She was an invited writer at Brown, UCSD, University of Alberta, and Université de Montréal, where she taught creative writing for fifteen years. Scott lives in Montréal.
Cecily Nicholson is the author of four books and a past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. She is an Assistant Professor in Poetry at the School of Creative Writing, UBC and will be the 2024/2025 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley. Cecily volunteers with community impacted by food insecurity and her most recent book HARROWINGS considers Black rurality, agriculture, and art history.

When My Ghost Sings by Tara Sidhoo Fraser
2023-10-04 18:00 | BC
On Wed. October 4th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Arsenal Pulp Press for the launch of Tara Sidhoo Fraser’s When My Ghost Sings: A Memoir of Stroke, Recovery, and Transformation.
Come and absorb Tara Sidhoo Fraser’s lucid exploration of amnesia, selfhood, and who is left behind when the past is obliterated. Tara will be joined by host Lanika Yule.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book:
When My Ghost Sings: A Memoir of Stroke, Recovery, and Transformation(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023)
Tara Sidhoo Fraser is thirty-two years old when a rare mutation in her brain causes a stroke, and she awakens after surgery with no memory of her previous life. Through a haze of amnesia, memories do begin to surface, but they are seen through someone else’s eyes—the person whose body she stole, whom she calls Ghost.
Fighting to stabilize her existence, Tara struggles with the gulf between who she was and who she is now while constantly battling and paying penance to Ghost—whose voice becomes stronger, and memories buried in the body they now share of hospital visits, old desires, and her ex threaten Tara’s new relationship.
She burrows deeper into the mystery of who she once was, recognizing the need to fuse herself and Ghost into one. When My Ghost Sings is a lyrical memoir of healing, a farewell letter, and a reclamation of selfhood.
About the author:
Tara Sidhoo Fraser (she/her) is a queer writer and creator who lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, Canada). A woman of South Asian and Scottish ancestry, she is split between family histories. She graduated from the University of Victoria with a BA in Anthropology in 2016 and has since published stories with Autostraddle and Anathema magazine. Her first book, When My Ghost Sings: A Memoir of Stroke, Recovery, and Transformation, is a love story centred in selfhood and who is left behind when the past is obliterated. tarasidhoofraser.com
About the host:
Lanika (Lah-NEE-kah) is a tender-hearted scribe who lives in the valley of the Stó:lō, on the sunny side of the street. Their poem “Mikveh” will be in the Federation of BC Writers 2022 Literary Contest Anthology. You can find her many squishy feelings at Lanika.ca
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Book Launch: Freddie by Grant Hayter-Menzies • Victoria, BC
2023-10-03 19:00 - 20:30 | Bolen Books, #111-1644 Hillside Ave., Victoria, BC, V8T 2C5, Canada
Join local author Grant Hayter-Menzies as he presents Freddie: The Rescue Dog Who Rescued Me, a book for anyone who has ever loved and lost an animal.
Freddie is the moving memoir of a writer—a biographer of historical animals—whose life was forever changed when a rescue dog came into his life.
Tracing their journey from Freddie’s adoption and socialization through his growing bond with Grant to his devastating cancer diagnosis in 2020, this memoir reminds us of everything that animals can teach us about love, loyalty, and courage, and is a call to action to end the unethical and abusive treatment of animals everywhere.
• Free to attend
• All ages welcome
• LGBTQ friendly
• Books will be available for purchase and signing
• To RSVP: To register for this event, use the ‘Buy Tickets’ (free) button at bolenbooks.com https://bolenbooks.com/events/29491
https://www.heritagehouse.ca/book/freddie/

Under the Table - Poetry Open Mic Series featuring Erin Kirsh
2023-10-03 18:00 | BC
On Tuesday, October 3rd, at 6pm PDT, join Massy Arts Society and a collective of brilliant poet organizers for Under The Table Open Mic Series, featuring Erin Kirsh.
Doors and sign-up at 5:45, show starts at 6
(we run on crip time with the understanding that bodies and brains aren’t always on schedule)
We invite you to sign up for the open mic as Under The Table welcomes us to laugh, cry, celebrate and sit in the richness of queer and disabled life, writing and poetics.
If 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.
Under the Table is an open mic series centering disabled and/or queer poets. This series was dreamed up out of a desire to share work, experience art, and connect with community in a covid safer, more accessible, and anti-oppressive space. Partnering with Massy Voices and Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture, Under the Table Open Mic Series will be on the first Tuesday of each month with some events in person at Massy Arts Society and others virtually on zoom.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Massy Arts Gallery is a single-level space, in one single room. The entryway to the building is 38″ wide, with a transition less than 0.5″. The front door is a push door that swings inward to the left. There is no automatic opening door or switch but the door will stay open until the show starts. There is one gender inclusive bathroom in the space. The door is not automatic. Pull to enter, push to exit. The width of the doorway is 90cm / 35.5in. The bathroom is 45sq ft. There are two sets of grab bars located behind and to the right of the toilet.The space is a scent-free space. We kindly ask that event attendees refrain from wearing scented products in the space. The venue has a scent free soap and uses scent free cleaning products.
ASL 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
COVID-19 SAFETY
Masks are required for this event (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection) and will be provided for anyone who does not bring one. There will be an air purifier in the space as well as antibacterial microphone covers. The host and feature poet will rapid test before the event and we encourage attendees to rapid test before coming as well. We ask that you stay home if you are showing symptoms or had a recent exposure.
About Under The Table:
Under the Table is a space where the richness that is queer and disabled life and art, flourishes and finds a home. It’s a space to share work that’s asking to be told, but might not be welcomed in other spaces, if you are able to access those spaces at all. It’s a space where being queer and/or disabled (whether or not those specific words resonate for you) makes your work a brilliant fit, regardless of how queer or disabled you think the poetry you wish to share is, how connected you are to disabled and/or queer community, and whether you feel disabled and/or queer “enough” to participate. It’s a space to witness and engage with the work of incredible artists, anywhere on their path of sharing their work–from the person who has never shared in front of an audience, to artists who have read or performed work many times. It’s a space where there’s room to be scared, and choose to be in community, share, and engage with others’ work. It’s a space where we don’t claim to know all the answers, but are willing to be in the messy, nuanced space of learning together. Come to “Under the Table” to laugh, cry, celebrate, sit in discomfort, feel understood, and be together.
This event has been made possible by The League of Canadian Poets, Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
With Featured Poet:
Erin Kirsh is a queer, hard-of-hearing writer and performer from Toronto. Kirsh is a two-time member of the Vancouver Poetry Slam team and served as the Managing Director for the 2016 Verses Festival of Words. Erin’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in magazines worldwide. When she’s not talking about books, Kirsh enjoys pop culture hot takes and befriending the neighbourhood cats.

Take the Compass by Maureen Hynes with guest poet Kim Trainor
2023-10-02 18:00 | BC
On Monday, October 2nd at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, McGill-Queen’s University Press and Goose Lane Editions in welcoming Maureen Hynes with guest Kim Trainor.
Hynes’ Take the Compass and Trainor’s A thin fire runs through me travel in time through the troubled present and into our perilous collective futures, interrogating existence, courage, and complexity on the journey.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the books
Take the Compass (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023)
A strong theme of journeys is threaded through Maureen Hynes’s Take the Compass. In a sense, every poem is itself a journey—into the past or the present, or toward what we hope and fear for the future. Poems can be journeys of repair and recovery, adventure and discovery. However, even in these pandemic times when our “journeying” is confined or even curtailed, when we are abiding in one physical location with chafing and restiveness, we are still travelling. And of course, one of those journeys is discovering where language can take us.
The poems in Take the Compass travel through cities and their outskirts, to rivers, forests and graveyards. They travel in time through the troubled present, across decades into early childhood and into our perilous collective futures, seeking guides for these explorations. The title poem addresses the search for tools and instruments that will “ward off adversity,” and help us move forward to our chosen destinations. Take the Compass calls on art and nature as invisible helpers, and on uncountable things – personal values and traits, such as courage – to “break the bad news into nine living petals.”
As with all her collections, Hynes shows a commitment to social justice, to acknowledging historical and contemporary inequities, to the search for sources of remedy, repair and renewal, and to the sustaining power of love. The variety of poetic forms she has chosen lets this search carry the complexity and seriousness of its themes.
A thin fire runs through me (Goose Lane Editions, 2023)
In A thin fire runs through me, Kim Trainor interrogates what it means to exist, to navigate the quotidian amidst the constant drip-feed of political and ecological disasters.
Written over an intense nine-month period in 2016 and 2017 amidst the stresses of heartbreak, depression, and the progression of a new love, Trainor’s exquisite sequence of short poems offers meditations on different hexagrams in the I Ching, or Book of Changes. Incorporating fragments from reportage on current events, Jewish liturgy, and lyric poetics, she latches her readers to the present while acknowledging the inescapable presence of the past.
About the poets
Maureen Hynes lives in Dish with One Spoon territory/Toronto, and is the author of six collections of poetry, including Take the Compass, from McGill-Queen’s University Press. Her first collection won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award and following collections have been finalists for the League’s Raymond Souster Award, and twice for the Pat Lowther Award, as well as the Golden Crown Literary Award for lesbian writers (U.S). Her poetry has been included in over 30 anthologies, including three times in Best Canadian Poems in English (2010, 2016 and 2020), and in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2021). Maureen has given numerous poetry workshops and has taught at the University of Toronto’s Creative Writing certificate program. (www.maureenhynes.com).
Kim Trainor is the granddaughter of an Irish banjo player and a Polish faller who worked in logging camps around Port Alberni in the 1930s. A thin fire runs through me appeared with icehouse poetry in 2023. A blueprint for survival will appear in Spring 2024 with Guernica Editions. Her poems have appeared in Anthropocenes (AHIP), Ecocene, ISLE, Ecozon@, Dark Mountain (UK) and Fire Season I and II (Vancouver). Her poetry films have screened at Zebra Poetry Film Festival (Berlin) and at +the Institute [for experimental art] (Athens), as well as in Ireland and the US. Her current project is “walk quietly / ts’ekw’unshun kws qututhun,” a guided walk at Hwlhits’um (Canoe Pass) in Delta, BC, which she has co-curated with the artist Amy-Claire Huestis, and which features contributions from artists, scientists, and Hwlitsum and Cowichan knowledge holders.

Empty Spaces by Jordan Abel
2023-10-01 14:00 - 17:00 | BC
On Sunday, October 1st at 2pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and McLelland & Stewart for the launch of Jordan Abel’s Empty Spaces.
Empty Spaces is a bold and profound new vision of history that decenters human perception and forgoes Westernized ways of seeing.
Jordan will be joined by moderator and author Mercedes Eng.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book
Empty Spaces (McLelland & Stewart, 2023)
From the acclaimed, boundary-breaking author of NISHGA comes a hypnotic and mystifying exploration of land and legacy.
Reimagining James Fenimore Cooper’s nineteenth-century text The Last of the Mohicans from the contemporary perspective of an urban Nisga’a person whose relationship to land and traditional knowledge was severed by colonial violence, Jordan Abel explores what it means to be Indigenous without access to familial territory and complicates popular understandings about Indigenous storytelling. Engaging the land through fiction and metaphor, the successive chapters of Empty Spaces move toward an eerie, looping, and atmospheric rendering of place that evolves despite the violent and reckless histories of North America. The result is a bold and profound new vision of history that decenters human perception and forgoes Westernized ways of seeing.
Jordan Abel’s extraordinary debut work of fiction grows out of his groundbreaking visual compositions in NISHGA, which integrated descriptions of the landscape from Cooper’s settler classic into his father’s traditional Nisga’a artwork. In Empty Spaces, Abel reinscribes those words on the page itself, subjecting them to bold rewritings and inviting us to come to a crucial understanding: that the land knows everything that can and will happen, even as our world lurches toward uncertainty.
About the author
Jordan Abel is a queer Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). NISHGA won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres award, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Abel’s work has been published in numerous journals and magazines—including Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, and The Fiddlehead—and his work has been anthologized widely, including The Broadview Introduction to Literature. Abel completed a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University in 2019, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures, Research-Creation, and Creative Writing.
About the moderator
Mercedes Eng is the author of Mercenary English, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, which won the BC Poetry Prize, and my yt mama. She is an Assistant Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she organizes the On Edge reading series. Mercedes dreams and works towards a prison-free future.
~~~
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Launch of Hologram: an Homage to P.K. Page
2023-09-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 1Y2, Canada
Join Munro’s Books for the launch of Hologram: an Homage to P.K. Page
Editors Yvonne Blomer and D.C. Reid will host an evening of poetry with local poets John Barton, Stephen T. Berg, Barbara Black, Wendy Donawa, Beth Kope, Dan MacIsaac, Lynne Mustard, Barbara Pelman, Pamela Porter, and Cynthia Woodman Kerkham in a poetic tribute to one of Canada’s most influential and celebrated poets.
Edited by Yvonne Blomer and DC Reid, and featuring pieces from renowned poets including John Barton, Marilyn Bowering, Lorna Crozier, Eve Joseph, Patrick Lane, Alice Major, kjmunro, Patricia Young, and many others, Hologram is testament to the mentoring that P.K. Page offered through community and conversation, as a living writer and through her poetry.

Foraging and Feasting in the Pacific Northwest: Lori Snyder and Robin Kort
2023-09-26 18:30 | BC
On Thursday, September 28th at 6pm join Massy Arts, Massy Books and TouchWood Editions for the launch of The Coastal Forager’s Cookbook by Chef Robin Kort.
Learn how to connect with the flora and fauna in and around Vancouver through an inspired conversation between chef-author Robin Kort and herbalist Lori Snyder.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book
The Coastal Forager’s Cookbook showcases foraged ingredients like wild mushrooms, seaweed, fish and molluscs, flowers and evergreen tips, and brings them together in 40 recipes to inspire forays into tide and woods and a sense of adventure in the kitchen. Along the way Robin shares memories of her childhood on the West Coast and her world travels, tips on plant identification, and guidance on mindful, sustainable foraging.
About the author
Robin Kort is a Pacific Northwest chef, forager, sommelier, and owner of Swallow Tail Culinary Adventures. She harvests and cooks between the mountains and the ocean near Vancouver, BC, and has been featured on the Food Network, ItteQ Japan, the CBC, the Huffington Post, Conde Nast Traveller, and in the Globe and Mail.
About the moderator
Lori Snyder is an Indigenous Metis Herbalist and Educator. She works on co-creating insightful dialogues in community, remediating and reconciling with our Indigenous plants as we reintroduce them into our urban landscapes. She also promotes access to local Indigenous foods and medicines, which supports collective resilience and deep ecological healing for all species.

Becoming Kin: Abolition, Borders and Indigenous Futures
2023-09-25 18:00 | BC
On Monday, September 25th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, Broadleaf Books and Fernwood Publishing for Becoming Kin: Abolition, Borders and Indigenous Futures: Patty Krawec and Harsha Walia in Conversation.
Join these two singular thinkers and friends in conversation on the most pressing issues of our times; unforgetting our histories of racist nationalism and forging relational, abolitionist futures.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the authors:
Patty Krawec is a Anishinaabe/Ukrainian writer, speaker, and co-host of the Medicine for the Resistance podcast where she, along along with her cohost and guests, confront barriers and challenge settler narratives. She is the co-founder of the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation. Find her online at daanis.ca
Harsha Walia is a Punjabi writer and organizer who has been involved in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, abolitionist, and anti-imperialist movements for the past two decades. Her work is in the anti-violence sector serving survivors. She is also the award-winning author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021) and Undoing Border Imperialism (2013), and co-author of Never Home: Legislating Discrimination in Canadian Immigration as well as Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
About the books:
Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future (Broadleaf Books, 2022)
We find our way forward by going back.
The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won’t just send them all “home.”
Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future. Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity? Braiding together historical, scientific, and cultural analysis, Indigenous ways of knowing, and the vivid threads of communal memory, Krawec crafts a stunning, forceful call to “unforget” our history.
This remarkable sojourn through Native and settler history, myth, identity, and spirituality helps us retrace our steps and pick up what was lost along the way: chances to honor rather than violate treaties, to see the land as a relative rather than a resource, and to unravel the history we have been taught.
Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Fernwood Publishing, 2021)
In Border and Rule, one of North America’s foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation.
Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change generating mass dispossession worldwide. Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, ruling-class, and racist nationalist rule. Ambitious in scope and internationalist in orientation, Border and Rule breaks through American exceptionalism and liberal responses to the migration crisis and cogently maps the lucrative connections between state violence, capitalism, and right-wing nationalism around the world.
Illuminating the brutal mechanics of state formation, Walia exposes US border policy as a product of violent territorial expansion, settler-colonialism, enslavement, and gendered racial exclusion. Further, she compellingly details how Fortress Europe and White Australia are using immigration diplomacy and externalized borders to maintain a colonial present, how temporary labor migration in the Arab Gulf states and Canada is central to citizenship regulation and labor control, and how far-right nationalism is escalating deadly violence in the United States, Israel, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and across Europe, while producing a disaster of statelessness for millions elsewhere.
A must-read in these difficult times of war, inequality, climate change, and global health crisis, Border and Rule is a clarion call for revolution. The book includes a foreword from renowned scholar Robin D. G. Kelley and an afterword from acclaimed activist-academic Nick Estes.
____
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Maybe a Whale by Kirsten Pendreigh with Illustrator Crystal Smith
2023-09-24 15:00 - 17:00 | BC
#KIDSBOOK On Sunday, September 24th at 3pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Groundwood Books for the launch of Maybe a Whale by Kirsten Pendreigh with illustrator Crystal Smith.
We’ll read from the book, share the magic of whale sounds and nighttime camping on the West Coast and make some whale crafts together with insights into Crystal’s amazing illustrations! Cake and refreshments will be provided. Hope to see you there!
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book
Maybe A Whale (Groundwood Books, 2023)
After Grandpa dies, a girl and her mother take the trip he had planned for her, kayaking along the Pacific west coast to look for the whales that he loved.
The trip will do them good, Mom says, but the girl isn’t sure. How can that be true when Grandpa isn’t there? And how will they find a whale in all that water, anyway?
There is so much to see as they paddle through white-tipped waves and calm coves: glowing moon jellies, fluttering anemones and slippery seals. All the while, the girl watches for whales. Could one be swimming beneath their kayak or along the shore of their camp? Are the whales even there?
Finally, in the dark of night, they hear them — pushhhhhhhh, pushhhhhhh — humpbacks breathing in the bay.
In this lyrical story, luminously illustrated by Crystal Smith, mom and daughter find the space to grieve Grandpa and reconnect with each other in the wild beauty of nature. And they come to realize that — perhaps like whales — those we’ve loved are always with us, even if we don’t see them anymore.
About the author
Kirsten Pendreigh is a poet and children’s author from Vancouver. Her children’s books celebrate our early instincts to care for the plants and creatures that share our planet. LUNA’S GREEN PET, about a girl who raises a houseplant as a pet, was a Quill & Quire Book of the Year. MAYBE A WHALE, about a child discovering the healing power of nature on a kayak trip, was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. Kirsten’s first nonfiction for children, WHEN A TREE FALLS, comes out in 2025. Kirsten’s poems are found in Canadian literary magazines and anthologies including Best Canadian Poetry 2021. One of her poems will be riding the bus this fall as part of Poetry In Transit.
About the illustrator
Crystal illustrates the natural world to spark curiosity and wonder, kindle concern, and illuminate issues. She is the daughter of a lighthouse keeper and started life on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, where groceries were delivered by helicopter and trips to town meant riding with the Coast Guard. She’s still an island girl —just on a bigger island now— off the coast of BC Canada.
​Crystal has a BFA in Visual Arts and works on fine art, illustration projects for environmental groups and other clients, and has another children’s book coming out from Groundwood Books 2024.

Fiction Writing Workshop with Patti Flather "Creating an Evocative Fictional World"
2023-09-24 10:30 - 12:30 | North Vancouver Public Library – Capilano branch, 3045 Highland Blvd., North Vancouver, BC, V7R 2X4, Canada
A fully realized setting is a powerful element to bring your readers into the world of your story. Explore practical ways to create your setting, using your imagination, research, observation skills, and fresh original details. Capture the vivid landscape your characters journey through, including and going beyond the physical to socio-political trends, the cultural milieu, inequalities, and more.
About Patti Flather
Award-winning author Patti Flather, originally from North Vancouver and now based in Whitehorse, Yukon, has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Such A Lovely Afternoon is her first fiction collection; her plays including Paradise andSixty Below have been shared on stages across Canada and published. www.pattiflather.com
Books by the author will be available for purchase:
Such A Lovely Afternoon (fiction) $23
Paradise (play) $20
Payment accepted: Cash, personal cheque or e-transfer
You may register for one or both workshops in this series:
Dialogue that Leaps Off the Page – Saturday, September, 23 at 2:00pm
Creating an Evocative Fictional World – Sunday, September, 24 at 10:30am
Registration required. Register online or call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.

Drug Tales: An Evening of Storytelling and Open Mic
2023-09-23 18:30 | BC
Join Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Get Sensible for a fascinating conversation with Caitlin Donohue, author of Weed: Cannabis Culture in the Americas and Dr. Emily Jenkins in an enlightening conversation about weed and its impacts on young people.
Following the conversation, Healthcliff (Heath D’Alessio) from Get Sensible will facilitate an open mic, Drug Tales, where folks can share their drug related stories. This will be an opportunity for audience members to come up on stage and share a story of their own. We recognize the stigma surrounding substance use, and know that healing can come through sharing our experiences. In order to build better drug policies, hearing stories from the community is essential.
This event is held at Massy Arts Society and food and beverages will be provided! The event starts at 6:30pm. This is a by-donation event (PWYC), with the suggested amount starting at $10. However, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
About Caitlin
Caitlin has been writing about marijuana for a decade. She started with her weekly column Herbwise at the San Francisco Bay Guardian alt weekly, when now-legal California dispensaries’ battled with the federal government. She interviews figures from Mexico’s drug politics and culture every Monday for her Spanish language radio show Crónica. She has been a regular contributor to High Times and Snoop Dogg’s cannabis news website MERRYJANE. She sees cannabis as a way of understanding societal structures, from international borders to health and wellness.
In Weed: Cannabis Culture in the Americas, culture writer Caitlin Donohue crafts a comprehensive and thought-provoking review of cannabis in the Western Hemisphere. Donohue’s investigation spans from Vancouver, Canada, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, interviewing medical researchers, educators, activists, artists, business leaders, and other experts to explore the long relationship between cannabis and the human race, its almost universal prohibition in the twentieth century, and modern efforts to legalize the much-maligned plant in all its forms.
https://www.donohue.work/aboutcat
About Emily
Dr. Emily Jenkins, brings extensive clinical and research expertise from acute and community mental health and substance use settings.
Her clinical training and experience informs her program of research, which aims to enhance mental health outcomes and reduce substance use harms for Canadians through mental health promotion strategies and health services and policy redesign. She is recognized as a leader in the youth mental health and substance use field and has established policy, practice and media channels that support knowledge mobilization and research impact.
About Heathcliff
Heathcliff is a people person who loves drugs, which is why they’re thrilled to be hosting this Vancouver edition of Drug Tales! A performing artist, facilitator, community educator, and all around pretty nice guy, they’re passionate about harm reduction and storytelling and love facilitating safe spaces to talk about taboo subjects and bond over shared experiences while sharing knowledge and learning from each other
Excited to see you there!

Fiction Writing Workshop with Patti Flather “Dialogue that Leaps Off the Page”
2023-09-23 14:00 - 15:30 | North Vancouver Public Library – Capilano branch, 3045 Highland Blvd., North Vancouver, BC, V7R 2X4, Canada
Bring your characters to life through dialogue. Discover their unique voices. Create compelling conversations that advance your story while revealing character. Whether you’re writing fiction, plays or screenplays, this workshop offers useful guidelines, practical examples and writing exercises to help make your characters distinct and memorable and your scenes sizzle.
About Patti Flather
Award-winning author Patti Flather, originally from North Vancouver and now based in Whitehorse, Yukon, has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Such A Lovely Afternoon is her first fiction collection; her plays including Paradise andSixty Below have been shared on stages across Canada and published. www.pattiflather.com
Books by the author will be available for purchase:
Such A Lovely Afternoon (fiction) $23
Paradise (play) $20
Payment accepted: Cash, personal cheque or e-transfer
You may register for one or both workshops in this series:
Dialogue that Leaps Off the Page – Saturday, September, 23 at 2:00pm
Creating an Evocative Fictional World – Sunday, September, 24 at 10:30am
Registration required. Register online or call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.

Halina! Kadto kamo! Sung na! - Celebrating Our Languages
2023-09-21 18:00 | BC
* The following words mean “Let’s go!” or “Come on!” – “Halina!” (Tagalog – halika + na); “Kadto kamo!” (Hiligaynon); “Sung na!” (Sinug).
Halina at magsama-sama tayo para ipagdiwang ang ating mga wika! Dali kamo mag inistoryahanay kita! Agtitimpuyog ken agkaykaysa tayo nga mangrambak ti nadumaduma nga kultura!
Let our languages come alive, be heard, and echo through the room! This event highlights the diversity of our languages, with more than 150 languages hailing from the islands of the Philippines.
Take the stage to read a captivating poem, a mesmerizing story, or sing a heartwarming song in any of the languages from the Philippines. Whether it’s your own creation or a piece by your favourite Filipina/x/o writer, we encourage you to share the magic of our linguistic heritage. Don’t forget to provide credit to the original writer of the piece you choose, or to let us know if it is an original creation.
Performers
Only 12 slots available for performers — secure your spot today! https://forms.gle/JusQjm1ryiEThAUK9 We will have a couple of spots available for sign up in person. Please note that we will be exclusively featuring performers who are Pinxy/Pinay/Pinoy or mixed race Pinxy/Pinay/Pinoy.
Register now
While everyone is welcome, we prioritize Pinxy/a/o attendees, or that you have been invited to join by a Pinxy/a/o person.
Admission is free, but please register in advance to help us manage the event smoothly. We can admit approximately 30 people. Snacks and refreshments will be available.
Kamaya’ daran! Pag-amping!
This event is presented by NPC3, the National Pilipino Canadian Cultural Centre, a registered non-profit society.
Accessibility considerations
This event and venue requires attendees to wear a face mask as an extra precaution against COVID-19. Please bring your own mask, or we can provide you one onsite.
Massy Arts Gallery is accessible to folks who use wheelchairs, mobility scooters, and strollers. For detailed information about venue accessibility, visit https://massyarts.com/accessibility/.
Statement of solidarity, and resistance
It is incredible that while we take pride that many languages remain alive and well-used across the islands of the Philippines despite colonization, we also mourn the loss and the threats of losing many languages and their communicators as Indigenous and other ethnic groups continue to be displaced, targeted for defending their lands, and neglected in the Philippines. By highlighting the languages available and staying away from the framing of minimizing certain languages to “dialects”)
we are able to keep cultures alive and encourage pride in diversity. Staying connected to our languages is one of the privileges we have, while also recognizing that languages and cultural knowledge were one of the colonial tactics used by Canada to oppress and subjugate Indigenous peoples on their lands. Speaking our languages while on stolen lands is one way we can resist global colonial projects, sending a message that no matter where we are due to colonization and ongoing imperialism, we will keep practicing our cultures and keep our ancestors’ ways of knowing and living alive.
We are on the ancestral, unceded, and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and we are in solidarity with them and all Indigenous and oppressed peoples across the world to resist against white supremacy, capitalism, the patriarchy, caste oppression and their products such as ableism, transphobia, homophobia, classism, and more.
Share this campaign

Race Memory Data
2023-09-20 19:00 | BC
At Simon Fraser University, we live and work on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen peoples.
Join artist Henry Tsang, historian Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen, urban planner Andy Yan as they talk about their approach to the use of data and archives to counter master narratives that have defined and restricted conversations around race and memory. Moderated by Melissa Karmen Lee, CEO of the Chinese Canadian Museum, they will also discuss and reflect on Henry Tsang’s recent book, WHITE RIOT: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver, based on the 360 video walking tour, 360 Riot Walk, which reveals the yet unresolved histories of racialized communities targeted through legislation as well as physical acts of exclusion and violence.
The talk will be followed by a reception where book sales and signing will take place. Books will be available for purchase via debit or credit, no cash purchase will be available.
This event is presented by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, SFU’s City Program, Arsenal Pulp Press, and Massy Books.
Panelists
Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen is a historian, curator, dumpster-diver, and teacher surfacing the disappeared stories othered by systems of power and wealth. Dr. Tchen is the Clement A. Price Professor of Public History & Humanities and Director of the Price Institute on Ethnicity, Cultures, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University – Newark. His ten-years of work on anti-Asian xenophobia, a two-hour PBS documentary on the “Chinese Exclusion Act,” and exhibition at the New-York Historical Society led him to focus on intersectional history of American eugenics. He has been working with the Munsee Lunaape Elders and honoring enslaved in the region by documenting, sharing, and decolonizing the history of Newark and the larger bioregion. He is the founding director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University, NYU. In 1980, he co-founded the New York Chinatown History project, now the Museum of Chinese in America with Charles Lai.
Andy Yan is the director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University where he is an adjunct professor of Urban Studies. Prior to his SFU appointment, Andy has worked extensively in the non-profit and private urban planning sectors with projects in the metropolitan regions of Vancouver, San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles and New Orleans. Andy holds a Masters of Urban Planning from the University of California – Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours distinctions in Geography and Political Science from Simon Fraser University.
Henry Tsang is an artist and occasional curator who explores the spatial politics of history, cultural translation, community-building, the mobility of people, capital, values, desires, and food in relationship to place. His recent book, WHITE RIOT: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023), explores the conditions leading up to and the impact of a demonstration and parade in Vancouver, Canada, organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League and the ensuing mob attack on the city’s Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian communities.
His art projects employ video, photography, interactive media, convivial events, and language, in particular, Chinook Jargon, the North American west coast trade language. Presentations take the form of gallery exhibitions, pop-up street food offerings, 360 video walking tours, curated dinners, ephemeral and permanent public art. Henry is a past recipient of the VIVA Award and is an Associate Dean at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
Moderator
Dr. Melissa Karmen Lee (Ph.D) 李林嘉敏 is a visual arts and literature scholar, curator, archivist and storyteller with research interests in public art and social engagement. She currently holds the appointment of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the Chinese Canadian Museum, in British Columbia, Vancouver. From 2019-2022, she was the Director of Education and Public Programs at the Vancouver Art Gallery. From 2016-2019 she was the education and public programs curator for Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Art. She holds degrees from McGill, Canterbury and Lancaster Universities.
For purposes of documentation this event may be photographed, audio recorded, and/or filmed. By attending this event, you consent to such recording media and its release, publication, exhibition or reproduction.
COVID-19 Safety:
Masks are encouraged on our campuses, particularly in spaces where people are in close proximity. Masks are not mandatory.
Further information on SFU’s Return to Campus policy can be found here.

Every Child Matters Book Launch with Phyllis Webstad
2023-09-17 13:30 - 16:00 | Songhees Wellness Centre, 1100 Admirals Rd, Victoria, British Columbia, V9A 2P6, Canada
Listen to Phyllis Webstad share her journey to reconciliation after attending Residential School and what Every Child Matters truly means.
Join Phyllis Webstad, founder of Orange Shirt Day, at the Songhees Wellness Centre for a powerful and intimate discussion about her time at Residential School. In her talks, Phyllis shares her personal experiences of attending Residential School when she was just six years old and how the nuns took her shiny new orange shirt her granny had gifted her.
Phyllis’s brave and compelling voice has brought attention to the need for education, empathy, and understanding about the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, while fostering important conversation about the ongoing efforts to address historical and generational trauma, and work toward a more inclusive and equitable future for Survivors, families and Indigenous communities.
With her new book Every Child Matters being released in August 2023, Phyllis talks about what Every Child Matters truly means and what wearing the Orange Shirt truly represents.
There will be dancers, singers and drummers performing along with an opening prayer by Butch Dick!
Tickets are only $10.00 and all profits of ticket sales will go to the Orange Shirt Society.
Handicap Parking Available
A local bookstore will be present selling all of Phyllis’s books.

Closing Reception / Kyla Gilbert + Otilia Sabina + Nico McGiffin
2023-09-16 14:00 - 17:00 | BC
On Saturday, September 16th from 2-4pm, join Massy Arts, and Vancouver-based artists Kyla Gilbert + Otilia Sabina + Nico McGiffin for the closing reception of our current exhibitions: Here I am, in the in-between, and Blue-Collar Sex Kitten.
At the event, artists will meet audiences in-person to talk about their creative practice, the show’s themes + aesthetics, and the process of creating in the in-between.
This project is supported by the Community Arts Council of Vancouver + First Peoples’ Cultural Council.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration 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.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
The Artists
Kyla Gilbert is a visual artist based out of Vancouver BC on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She graduated with a BFA in performance from Concordia University in 2017 and spent the two subsequent years touring as a puppeteer with DJ Kid Koala. Her current practice revolves around intuitive encounter with materials. As a former puppeteer and performer, she approaches her process as a site for improvisation that results in the creation of objects full of discrepancy, juxtaposition, awkwardness, and joy. Kyla completed my MFA in Studio Art from Emily Carr University in spring of 2022.
Otilia Sabina (she/her) is an interdisciplinary visual artist and designer born in Bucharest, Romania and raised on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied, traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ Nations of the Coast Salish peoples, also known as Vancouver. She holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2013). Otilia Sabina’s collage work re-contextualizes images and digital media to create new visual artifacts inspired by stories from both my life before and after immigrating to Canada.
Nico McGiffin (b.2002) is a non-binary, queer assemblage sculptor investigating the ways in which found and fabricated objects work to bridge the gap between butch-queer identities and highly macho cis-masculinity. They are based in “Vancouver BC” on the unceded traditional territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations, where they are completing their BFA in Sculpture + Expanded Practices at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Poetry Bus! Celebrating the 27th Year of Poetry in Transit
2023-09-16 12:30 - 14:00 | UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson St, Vancouver, BC, V6E 1A7, Canada
In partnership with TransLink and BC Transit, Read Local BC presents the launch of this year’s Poetry In Transit campaign at Word Vancouver. Now celebrating its 27th year, this beloved community-engagement project displays the work of ten BC poets on public transit vehicles throughout the province. Join us to hear a selection of the featured 2023-24 poets read from their work, followed by a short discussion and Q&A in which you can engage with the poets over your love of the written verse! Hosted by Evelyn Lau.
Readers:
Susan Braley – Tilling the Darkness (Caitlin Press & Dagger Editions)
P.W. Bridgman – At the Bakery After the Pathology Report Arrives (Ekstasis Editions)
Edward Byrne – Tracery (Talonbooks)
Megan Fennya Jones – The Program (Goose Lane Editions)
Mark Leiren-Young – Big Sharks, Small World (Orca Book Publishers)
Emily Osborne – Safety Razor (Gordon Hill Press)
Kirsten Pendreigh – Best Canadian Poetry 2021 (Biblioasis)
Ian Thomas – Green Islands: Poems from the Great Bear Rainforest (Rainbow Publishers & Raven Chapbooks)

Write on Bowen Festival for Readers & Writers
2023-09-16 - 2023-09-18 | Bowen Island Public Library, 430 Bowen Island Trunk Rd, Bowen Island, BC, V0N 1G0, Canada
This annual festival brings together readers and writers and all lovers of the spoken and written word. We gather on idyllic Bowen Island to spend two days engaged in stimulating writing workshops, facilitated by professional writers, authors, poets, screenwriters and others. We feature special events including author readings, panel discussions and other activities.

The Family Code by Wayne Ng + Discussion with Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho
2023-09-15 18:00 | BC
On Friday, September 15th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Guernica Editions in celebrating the Vancouver launch of Wayne Ng’s The Family Code.
Wayne Ng talks with Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho about his new book, The Family Code, his first work not featuring an Asian protagonist. They will discuss both straying from and remaining within the lane of immigrant tropes.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.
Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book:
The Family Code by Wayne Ng
Every family has rituals and routines holding them together. But sometimes they are the very things that tear them apart. The Family Code is a gritty family drama featuring the troubled life of Hannah Belenko, a young single mother dogged by the brutality of past traumas and a code of silence that she must crack in order to be free—or else lose everything. Hannah was raised by this code and rules her own family by it. When she loses her daughter to the state and her boyfriend threatens her, she flees from Ottawa to Halifax with her remaining son, six-year-old Axel. While she bulldozes her way through everything and schemes to protect him, Axel flounders in the chaos. He begins to doubt his mother and her dream of a way out. With her life crashing down, Hannah is driven by desperation to survive yet hangs on to elusive hope. With unvarnished and high-voltage prose, The Family Code unabashedly reveals the power and perils of parenting, but also the longing and vulnerability of children.
About the author
Wayne Ng was born in downtown Toronto to Chinese immigrants who fed him a steady diet of bitter melons and kung fu movies. Ng works as a school social worker in Ottawa but lives to write, travel, eat and play, preferably all at the same time. He is an award-winning author and traveler who continues to push his boundaries from the Arctic to the Antarctic. His previous books are Letters From Johnny, which won Best Crime Novella at the Crime Writers of Canada Excellence Awards, and Finding The Way: A Novel of Lao Tzu. Connect with Wayne at WayneNgWrites.com
About the host
Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho is a freelance technical writer, blogger and creative non-fiction writer. Her short stories and personal essays have won awards and been published in the literary journals PRISM international, Ricepaper, River Teeth, and Room. Wiley is in the throes of completing her first book, a memoir about growing up with parents overseas, in a Taiwanese-Canadian “astronaut” family.
