Readings & Events

The On Edge Reading Series

Emily Carr University of Art and Design, The On Edge Reading Series features Rajinderpal S. Pal and Elee Kraljii Gardiner in the Ron Burnett Library + Learning Commons.

I’ll be reading with Rajinderpal S. Pal, the author of two books of poetry: pappaji wrote poetry in a language i cannot read (TSAR, 1998), winner of the Alberta Book Awards Best First Book, and pulse (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002), shortlisted for the WO Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Alberta Book Awards for Poetry. He has been published in many anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (Norton, 2008). He has performed his poetry across Canada at events including The Scream in High Park (1999), and WordFest (1998). Rajinderpal was born in India, grew up in London, England and has called Canada home since 1980. He has collaborated with musicians and videographers to create multi-disciplinary presentations of his work. He is currently working on a new manuscript.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Everyone is welcome!

Elliott Bay Bookstore

I will be opening with work from serpentine loop for Rachel Rose who is reading from her memoir The Dog Lover Unit.

Launch of Daphne Marlatt’s Intertidal

Launch of Daphne Marlatt’s Intertidal, new and selected, from TalonBooks

I’ll be reading a poem of Daphne’s to celebrate her collected works, with Rita Wong, Colin Browne, Catriona Strang, Roy Miki, Fred Wah and editor Susan Holbrook.

Trauma Head: Reading the Medical File

The exhibit of The Beautiful Brain, the drawing of Santiago Ramón y Cajal  (d.1934) will be closing Dec 5 but before it does I will be reading from the chapbook “Trauma Head” with poet Ali Blythe.

Chicken Session

A reading-and-music session held in a private home, hosted by Pam Bentley.

Vancouver International Writer’s Fest

Launch of Sustenance: a Feast of Voices.

Reading with Rachel Rose, Thomas Haas, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Jami Macarty, Billeh Nickerson, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Annie Ross, Karen Shklanka, Kevin Spenst, Russell Thornton, Ayelet Tsabari

The Writer’s Studio at SFU

I will be speaking to Betsy Warland’s memoir class with Gurjinder Basran and Jennifer Zilm.

WORD Vancouver

Poet Kevin Spenst invited me to share his chapbook table at WORD Vancouver. I will be there with Trauma Head! And visiting the Thursdays Writing Collective table, too.

Poetic Pairings, part of WORD Festival

Poets present collaborations. Host: Mary Duffy. Poetic Pairs: Jónína Kirton and Sho Wiley, Elee Kraljii Gardiner and RC Weslowski, Bonnie Nish and Angela Rebrec, Cynthia Sharp and Timothy Shay, Chelsea Comeau and Lara Varesi

Write On Vancouver

I’m happy to be hosting Writers Resist, Writers Respond at the VPL’s one-day literary festival. Join four poets engaged in social justice for a morning of creative listening and writing. Each author will share a poem of their own and one by an author of their choice. After the readings listeners are invited to activate as writers, crafting on-the-spot responses that can be added to a community archive in the room. Paper and pen provided; all welcome.

Juliane Okot Bitek is a Liu Scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues and a Poetry Ambassador for the City of Vancouver’s Poet Laureate Rachel Rose. She is completing her dissertation in the department of Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program at UBC. Juliane’s book of poetry, 100 Days, was published by the University of Alberta Press in 2016. The book was the result of a project, inspired by the photographs of Wangechi Mutu, in which Juliane wrote a poem a day for one hundred days in the summer of 2014, each a response to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It has been shortlisted for the 2017 Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry and is a finalist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Award for Poetry.

Sonja Larsen has been collecting stories her whole life. As a kid she hitch-hiked across country and lived in 3 communes and one cult. As an adult she has worked as a telephone solicitor, bartender, freelance writer, teacher, and youth worker in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Her fiction has appeared in literary magazines, including Room, Descant and a flash fiction anthology. Her memoir RED STAR TATTOO (Random House 2016) was shortlisted for the 2016 Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Non-Fiction award.

Leah Horlick is a writer who grew up as a settler on Treaty Six Cree Territory in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her first collection of poetry, Riot Lung (Thistledown Press, 2012), was shortlisted for a 2013 ReLit Award and a Saskatchewan Book Award. Her second collection, For Your Own Good (Caitlin Press, 2015), was named a 2016 Stonewall Honour Book by the American Library Association. Along with Esther McPhee, Leah co-curates REVERB, Vancouver’s only queer and anti-oppressive reading series. Last year she was awarded the 2016 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Emerging Writers.

Women of BC

READ LOCAL BC 2017 PRESENTS: WOMEN OF BC

Read Local BC Presents six acclaimed female poets and authors, who will each read from their latest works: Serpentine Loop by Elee Kraljii Gardiner, What We Once Believed by Andrea MacPherson, Wherever I find Myself by Miriam Matejova, U Girl by Meredith Quartermain, for love and autonomy by Anahita Jamali Rad, and Beckoned by the Sea by Sylvia Taylor.

UNBC Reading

Hey, they recorded it! I read for about half an hour and they cut the feed before the Q&A, which went on for about 15 minutes.