Spring Season 2012
Robson Reading Series presents
Catherine Owen and Waubgeshig Rice
Thursday, May 17, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
In Catherine Owen's latest book, Catalysts (Wolsak & Wynn, 2012), she examines with her characteristic fearlessness what drives her to write and the influences that shape her writing. From her childhood memories in suburban Vancouver to her willingness to risk all for a glimpse of her muse, these essays allow readers unparalleled insight into her creative life.
Catherine Owen has published seven previous collections of poetry including Frenzy (Anvil Press, 2009), which won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry for 2009 and Seeing Lessons (Wolsak & Wynn, 2010). Her books and poems have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, BC Book Prize, ReLit Award, George Ryga Award for Socially Conscious Literature, and The Earle Birney Prize. Catalysts is her first compilation of prose essays and memoir. She also plays bass in the metal band Medea and works as a freelance editor and tutor. She lives in Vancouver, BC.
Waubgeshig Rice's short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge (Theytus Books, 2011), is an emotionally charged fictional account of aboriginal youth who visit an elder at a sweatlodge and recount their most troubling life experiences. It offers a textured portrait of contemporary aboriginal life, both the solid ground of traditional practices and the importance of full engagement in the wider world.
Waubgeshig Rice is a broadcast journalist and writer. He grew up in Wasauksing, an Anishinaabe community on the shores of Georgian Bay. His articles, essays and columns have been published in national newspapers and magazines, and as a television journalist he has filed reports from across Canada. Midnight Sweatlodge is his first book. Waubgeshig lives and works in Ottawa, ON.
Catherine Owen and Waubgeshig Rice appear thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
topRobson Reading Series presents
Aaron Bushkowsky and Phil Hall
Thursday, June 14, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
In Aaron Bushkowsky's latest novel, Curtains for Roy (Cormorant Books, 2012), a burned-out playwright accompanies his best friend, a terminally ill director, on a road trip to the Okanagan Valley for a final summer of wine tasting only to end up on the set of a doomed Shakespeare production. It is a hilarious and poignant peek into the world of theatre, where the greatest drama is offstage and the best performances take place behind the curtain.
Aaron Bushkowsky's publications include two books of poetry, four books of drama, and two of prose. He has been nominated seven times for Jessie Theatre Awards and twice won the award for Outstanding Original Play for The Waterhead (2001) and Strangers Among Us (1999). His first poetry collection, ed and mabel go to the moon (Oolichan Books, 1994), was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award. Curtains for Roy combines his two loves: wine and theatre. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
"Suspicious of artifice, surgically self-evaluating, Hall's poems at once pay tribute to writers and friends who have shaped his sense of integrity while analyzing his own progress and methods as an artist. A record of private and imaginative growth, Killdeer builds a powerful narrative of recognition, attesting to the introspective mind's capacity to transgress pain." -Griffin Poetry Prize Judges Citation
In Killdeer (BookThug, 2011), Phil Hall offers memories of, and homages to Margaret Laurence, Bronwen Wallace, Libby Scheier, and Daniel Jones, among others. He writes of the embarrassing process of becoming a poet, and of his push-pull relationship with the whole concept of home. His notorious 2004 chapbook essay "The Bad Sequence" is also included here, with its teeth sharpened.
Phil Hall's most recent book of essay-poems, Killdeer, won the 75th Governor General's Award for Poetry and is currently on the shortlist for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize. His first book, Eighteen Poems, was published in Mexico City in 1973. Other titles include: Old Enemy Juice (1988), Hearthedral - A Folk-Hermetic (1996), An Oak Hunch (Brick Books, 2005), and The Little Seamstress, (Pedlar Press, 2010). He has taught at York, Ryerson, Seneca, and George Brown and was poet-in-residence at Sage Hill Writing Experience and The Pierre Berton House. He lives near Perth, Ontario.
Photo of Aaron Bushkowsky by Diana Lyon.
Photo of Phil Hall by Ann Silversides.
Aaron Bushkowsky and Phil Hall appear thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
topPrevious Events
Robson Reading Series at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
presents
C. E. Gatchalian
Thursday, May 10, 2012, 2:00-3:00pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre,
Lillooet Room 301
UBC Point Grey
campus, 1961 East Mall
"Known for pushing theatrical boundaries with a gritty and no-holds barred view of the world and homosexuality, C.E. Gatchalian doesn't disappoint in his latest outing. This time though, he adds race to a mix of sex, graphic language and nudity." --Mark Robins, GayVancouver.net
Raw in its emotionalism and bold in its theatricality, C.E. Gatchalian's latest play, Falling in Time (Scirocco Drama, 2012) is set in Vancouver in 1994 and tells the story of four individuals across two continents and over a span of more than forty years. The lives of these characters miraculously intertwine in an uncompromising meditation on war, masculinity, sexuality, personal boundaries, and love.
C.E. Gatchalian is a playwright, fiction writer, poet, editor, and teacher. His published works include: Motifs & Repetitions (Midpoint Trade Books, 2003), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; Broken (New Bard Press, 2006), a suite of one-act plays, Crossing & Other Plays (Lethe Press, January 2011), and Falling in Time (Scirocco Drama, 2012). He has also published a chapbook of poetry called tor/sion (Ranson Works Press, 2005). The winner of the 2005 Gordon Armstrong Playwright's Rent Award, he has been Playwright-in-Residence at Playhouse Theatre Company and the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver, and Writer-in-Residence at the Berton House Writers' Retreat in Dawson City, Yukon. His work has been produced on stages in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg and New Zealand, as well as on CBC Radio and the Bravo Channel. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
C. E. Gatchalian appears thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
The Robson Reading Series partners with the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to present a series of afternoon readings throughout the academic year. All events are free and open to the public.
topRobson Reading Series presents
Stephanie Bolster and Theresa Kishkan
Thursday, May 3, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
"The thrill of this collection...is in the way it perches (and invites readers to perch) so
precariously in places at once familiar and strange. The poems are mainly set in zoos, botanical
gardens, aviaries, and museums, places themselves balancing the natural and artificial. Bolster's
voice here is forthright and sure, yet also subtly distant. Indeed, the perspective in the poems
is often elusive: who is the perceiver? the perceived?"
--Moberley Luger, Canadian Literature
online, February 2012.
In Stephanie Bolster's fourth collection, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books, 2011), she takes us into richly troubled places where questions of what it means to be human, to be animal, to be other and to be art are tangibly in the air. Acutely angled, filled with intertextual resonance and wit, the poems vacillate between wonder and horror.
Stephanie Bolster's first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems (Véhicule Press, 1998), won the Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her other titles include: Two Bowls of Milk (McClelland & Stewart, 1999), which won the Archibald Lampman Award, Pavilion (2002), and the anthology Penned: Zoo Poems (Signal Editions, 2009), which she co-edited with Katia Grubisic. Raised in Burnaby, BC, Stephanie now teaches at Concordia University and lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec.
"At once erotic, intellectually rigourous and beguiling, Mnemonic is cultural botany,
memoir, arboreal ethnography and love story. It is a sublime and rare thing when writing so
gracefully defies taxonomical classification."
--Terry Glavin, author of Come from the
Shadows
Warm, imaginative, and thoroughly original, Theresa Kishkan's memoir, Mnemonic: A Book of Trees (Goose Lane Editions, 2011), intertwines the mysteries of trees with the defining moments in her life as a novelist and essayist. For Kishkan, trees are memory markers of life, and in this book she explores the presence of trees in nature, in culture, and in her personal history.
Theresa Kishkan has published ten books, most recently Mnemonic: A Book of Trees, which is shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize; sections of this memoir were also nominated for the Pushcart Prize, a National Magazine Award, and one essay won the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Prize. Other books include The Age of Water Lilies (Brindle & Glass, 2009) and Phantom Limb (Thistledown Press, 2007). The latter was shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Prize and won the Creative Non-Fiction Collective's inaugural Readers' Choice Award. Theresa lives on the Sechelt Peninsula with her husband, the poet John Pass.
Photo of Theresa Kishkan by Keith Shaw.
Stephanie Bolster appears thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and in collaboration with the Planet Earth Poetry Series in Victoria, BC.
topCelebrate National Poetry Month with
Margaret Christakos, Leigh Kotsilidis and Steven Price
Tuesday, April 3, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
"An accomplished yet intransigently tricksy wordworker for life, Christakos wisely hews, with
unswerving urgency and subtle majesty, to William Carlos Williams's dictum, 'If it ain't a
pleasure, it ain't a poem.' It's a pleasure."
--Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe and
Mail
Anchored in the natural beauty of Margaret Christakos's hometown, the lyric poems in her most recent collection Welling (Scrivener Press, 2010), wager the gorgeous, poignant, complex trails that hinge self and other, past and present, individual and home, nature and technology, solitariness and optimism.
Margaret Christakos is the author of eight collections of poetry and a novel. Her most recent titles are Welling (Scrivener, 2010), a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book; What Stirs (Coach House Books, 2008), shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award; and, Sooner (Coach House Books, 2005). She has won the ReLit Award and the Bliss Carman Award, and been shortlisted for the Ontario Trillium Book Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (twice). She lives in Toronto.
"There's a beautiful recklessness in the combination Leigh Kotsilidis imagines...These poems wrangle with the vocabularies of explanation, pronouncement, commerce, argument and fact, allowing them, more often than not, to self-destruct, so that we can glimpse in the rubble and wreckage and aftershocks something we are not always in a position to remember." --Dara Wier, author of Reverse Rapture
In Leigh Kotsilidis's debut collection, Hypotheticals (Coach House Books, 2011), she questions the linguistic roots of 'the hypothetical,' both as they apply to the scientific method's faith in certainty, and to the word's alternate meaning as something that is merely 'supposed to be true.'
Leigh Kotsilidis grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals including The Fiddlehead, PRISM international and Prairie Fire, and have been anthologized in the publications I.V. Lounge Nights, This Grace, and The Hoodoo You Do So Well. In 2009 and 2010 she was selected as a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards. She is also the co-founder of littlefishcartpress. She currently lives in Montreal.
"[Steven Price] has written a book which plumbs the well-springs of Western poetic tradition
to create something utterly, dazzlingly original...Omens in the Year of the Ox is at once a wild musical ride and an engaging metaphysical quest."
--Mary Dalton, author of Merrybegot
Steven Price's highly anticipated second poetry collection, Omens in the Year of the Ox (Brick Books, 2012), is part of a long-lived struggle to address the mysteries that both surround and inhabit us, to address the moral lack in the human heart and the labour of living with such a heart.
Steven Price's first collection of poetry, Anatomy of Keys (Brick Books, 2006), was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award, won the Gerald Lampert Award and was named a Globe and Mail Book of the Year. His debut novel, Into That Darkness (Thomas Allen, 2011), has recently been shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. He teaches writing at the University of Victoria.
Margaret Christakos appears thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and in collaboration with the UBC-Okanagan Visiting Author Reading Series.
top Robson Reading Series at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
presents
Lee Maracle
Thursday, March 29, 2012, 2:00-3:00pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre,
Lillooet Room 301
UBC Point Grey
campus, 1961 East Mall
"Lee Maracle, a well-known First Nations author, weaves her magic once more in this small rich volume that will keep you turning pages until you close the cover with a sense of satisfaction. One story haunts you and is followed by another, totally different and just as appealing." --Joyce Atcheson, Anishinabek News
First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style (Theytus Books, 2010), is a poignant and powerful collection of short stories that provide revealing glimpses into the life experiences of an Aboriginal woman, a university professor, an activist and a single mother. With lyrical eloquence, Lee Maracle takes the reader on a deeply stirring and emotional journey that is at times humorous and heart-wrenching but not soon to be forgotten.
Lee Maracle is a member of the Stó:lo Nation and was born in North Vancouver. She is the author of numerous critically acclaimed literary works including: I Am Woman, Bobbi Lee - Indian Rebel, Ravensong, Sojourners & Sundogs, and Daughters are Forever. She has edited a number of anthologies including My Home As I Remember. She received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University and the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award. Lee currently teaches at the University of Toronto.
Lee Maracle appears thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
The Robson Reading Series partners with the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to present a series of afternoon readings throughout the academic year. All events are free and open to the public.
topTuesday, March 27, 2012 at 7pm:
UBC Bookstore and Arsenal Pulp Press Special Event
Billeh Nickerson launches his latest collection
Impact: The Titanic Poems
Robson Reading Series presents
Mark Lavorato and Nicole Lundrigan
Thursday, March 22, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
"Believing Cedric is a marvelously strange novel that explores a marvelously normal phenomenon: everyone in our lives has a story. Mark Lavorato writes with great humanity, compassion and curiosity." --Todd Babiak, author of Toby: A Man
In Mark Lavorato's second novel, Believing Cedric (Brindle & Glass, 2011), he tells the remarkable story of Cedric Johnson, a middle-aged insurance broker with an unusual problem. Cedric seems to be physically flashing back to pivotal moments from his past. It begins when his third-grade teacher notices a startling awareness in an otherwise unremarkable boy. Next, Cedric inhabits his fourteen-year-old body. He continues to travel through the life he's already lived, issuing warnings and searching for answers. But why should anyone believe him?
Mark Lavorato is the author of two novels, Veracity (Rain Publishing, 2007), and Believing Cedric, as well as a poetry collection, Wayworn Wooden Floors (The Porcupine's Quill, 2012). Mark, who lives in Montreal, also works as a street photographer and composer.
"Glass Boys is nothing short of a family epic. Evoking rural Newfoundland with a gritty grace that is all her own...Lundrigan intimately explores the unbreakable ties between us, weaving a tale of filthy beauty that never abandons its quest for love and rejuvenation." -- Arts East
In the style of Newfoundland literature established by Michael Crummey and Lisa Moore, Glass Boys (Douglas & McIntyre, 2011) is the haunting story of an unforgivable crime that brings two families to the brink. Powerfully written, with vivid and unflinching prose, it is an utterly riveting, deeply moving saga of the persistence of evil, and the depths and limits of love.
Nicole Lundrigan is the author of four novels: Unraveling Arva (Breakwater Books, 2003), Thaw (Jesperson Press, 2005), The Seary Line (Breakwater Books, 2008), and most recently, Glass Boys. Her literary fiction has been selected as a Globe and Mail Top Ten Pick, was long-listed for the ReLit Award, and given Honourable Mention for the Sunburst Award. Originally from Upper Gullies, Newfoundland, Nicole now lives in Markham, ON.
Photo of Nicole Lundrigan by Zoltán Deák.
Nicole Lundrigan appears thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
*Please note: Dani Couture, who was previously scheduled to appear March 22, had to cancel. We hope to re-schedule an event with her in Fall 2012.
topRobson Reading Series presents
Sean Johnston and Anne Simpson
Thursday, March 8, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
In Sean Johnston's second collection of poetry, The Ditch Was Lit Like This (Thistledown Press, 2011), he returns to the roots, ancestral and poetic, that have shaped his language and consciousness. Structured in five sections, the work interplays the convergence of memory and personal history in unexpected and profound ways that are both wise and revealing.
Sean Johnston's first book, A Day Does Not Go By (Nightwood Editions, 2002), won the 2003 ReLit Award for short fiction. His novel, All This Town Remembers (Gaspereau Press, 2006) was shortlisted for the ReLit Award and for a Saskatchewan Book Award and his short story, "The Instructions," was a finalist in the 2011 CBC Literary Awards. His work has been published in many Canadian journals, including The Malahat Review, Grain, and The Fiddlehead. Originally from Saskatchewan, he now lives in Kelowna, BC.
In Is (McClelland & Stewart, 2011), Anne Simpson finds form and inspiration in the cell---as it divides and multiplies, expanding beyond its borders. The poems journey from the creation of the world world emerging out of chaos to the slow unravelling of life that is revealed in a poem that twists like a double helix. Rich with the muscular craft, vibrant imagery, and exquisite musicality for which her poetry is widely acclaimed, Is is indeed a work of great vision.
Anne Simpson was the winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Poetry for her second book, Loop (McClelland & Stewart, 2003). She is the author of many award-winning books including Light Falls Through You (M&S, 2000), winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize; Quick (M&S, 2007), winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award; and a novel, Canterbury Beach (Viking Canada, 2001), which
was shortlisted for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.
Simpson lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
Photo of Anne Simpson by Karin Cope.
Sean Johnston and Anne Simpson appear thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
topRobson Reading Series presents
Steve Burgess and Daniel Griffin
Thursday, February 16, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
"Burgess has written not only the funniest book published this year, but one of the most moving memoirs Canada's prairies have offered up." --The Tyee
Who Killed Mom? A Delinquent Son's Meditation on Family, Mortality, and Very Tacky Candles (Greystone Books, 2011) brims with uproarious anecdotes and one-liners. Telling the tale of his mother's life and death, and along the way laying bare his own struggles, Burgess delivers a moving meditation on life and family.
Steve Burgess is a writer and broadcaster whose honours include two Canadian National Magazine Awards and three Western Magazine Awards. Burgess is the former host of "@the end," a talk show on CBC Newsworld, and a frequent CBC Radio guest host. Burgess's stories have been featured in Reader's Digest editions around the world, as well as Maclean's, The Globe and Mail, and other publications. His debut book, Who Killed Mom?, was chosen as a Globe 100 Best Book of the Year and for Canada Read's Top 40. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
"This fine fine collection evokes echoes of the plain and piercing voice of Raymond Carver. These stories upended me: they are strong, surprising and full of heart. The size of the soul looms large in Daniel Griffin's writing."
--David Bergen, author of The Time In Between
In Stopping for Strangers (Vehicule Press, Oct. 2011), stories about artists, lovers, brothers and strangers acutely probe love and loss, and the family ties that bind. A father renews an old artistic rivalry with his dying son; a raucous family gathering ends in tragedy; a quick stop to pick up a hitchhiker begins a chain of events that changes a man's life. Dark and yet uplifting, these stories take us to the tangled heart of what matters in the lives of people on the edge of crisis.
Daniel Griffin's stories have twice appeared in the Journey Prize anthology, and "The Last Great Works of Alvin Cale," was a finalist in 2009. His work was featured in Coming Attractions 08, and his stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Stopping for Strangers is his debut short story collection. He has lived in Guatemala, New Zealand, England, Scotland, France, India and the US and currently makes his home
in Victoria, BC.
topRobson Reading Series presents
Lynn Coady and Anne Perdue
Thursday, February 2, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
"The Antagonist excels at a number of levels: It's a readable, quixotic coming-of-age story, a comedy of very bad manners, and a thoughtful inquiry into the very nature of self. It's the sort of novel--and Coady the sort of writer--deserving of every accolade coming to it." --Robert J. Wiersema, National Post
In Lynn Coady's fifth novel, The Antagonist (House of Anansi, 2011), she delves deeply into the ways we sanction and stoke male violence, giving us a large-hearted, often hilarious portrait of a character tearing himself apart in order to put himself back together.
Lynn Coady is an award-winning author, editor and journalist. Her most recent book, The Antagonist, was a finalist for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was recognized as a top book of the year by the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Amazon.ca. Her previous novels include Strange Heaven (1998), which was nominated for a Governor General's Award; Saints of Big Harbour (2002), which was a national bestseller and a Globe and Mail Top 100 book; and Mean Boy (2006), also a Globe and Mail Top 100 book. She writes the popular weekly advice column, "Group Therapy." Lynn is originally from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and is now living in Edmonton, Alberta.
"Writing from a litany of perspectives...Perdue builds gritty characters who are pathetically funny, keenly aware of their own flaws, and sometimes so realistic it's painful to read on." --Katherine Laidlaw, This Magazine
The darkly humorous stories in Anne Perdue's debut collection of short fiction, I'm A Registered Nurse Not A Whore (Insomniac Press, 2010), take dead aim at how easily our desire to be good is perverted or undermined by a desperate need for love and recognition. Beautifully flawed, well-meaning yet easily sidelined, the characters in these eight stories catapult off the rails of ordinary life before raising themselves up--if only for a moment--in oddly heroic ways.
Anne Perdue was born in Winnipeg and has lived in Toronto and Vancouver. She studied English at the University of Toronto and graphic design at OCAD and paid for it all by working in a coal mine in Tumbler Ridge, BC. In 2009, she graduated with honours from the U of T School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing program where she won the Random House Student competition and received the Marina Nemat Excellence in Creative Writing Award. She lives in Toronto, ON.
Lynn Coady and Anne Perdue appear thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
top Robson Reading Series at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
presents
Kevin McNeilly
with percussionist Nicholas Jacques
Thursday, January 26, 2012, 2:00-3:00pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Lillooet Room 301
UBC Point Grey
campus, 1961 East Mall
"McNeilly gives us the lives of the jive cats and jellyroll mamas and Dixieland trumpeters who gave jazz meaning by making sure it'd swing...Best of all, McNeilly's poetry is lyrical, free, down-to-the-bone, as real, fresh, and immediate as true jazz always is." -George Elliott Clarke
Embouchure (Nightwood Editions, 2011), contains thirty-seven portraits of trumpet players who came to prominence during the "pre-bop" era. Buddy, Satch, Bix, Jabbo, Cootie, Cat and the rest are resurrected in their smoky, brassy, sepia-toned glory as figures deeply steeped in their own mythos. While embracing the fictional aspects of their lives, McNeilly styles these remarkable men and women with pure love and admiration, not only for their shared history and contribution to the evolution of jazz, but also for the pure, loud, messy beauty of the music itself.
Kevin McNeilly is an associate professor in the Department of English at UBC. He has written and published scholarship and critical essays on a variety of literature, media and music, including work by writers, thinkers and performers such as Charles Mingus, Elizabeth Bishop, Jan Zwicky, Miles Davis, and Robert Creeley. He is a member of the "Improvisation, Community and Social Practice" research initiative. In addition to his academic publications, he has had poems published in Canadian Literature and The Antigonish Review. Embouchure (Nightwood Editions, 2011) is his debut poetry collection. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
Kevin McNeilly appears thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
The Robson Reading Series partners with the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to present a series of afternoon readings throughout the academic year. All events are free and open to the public.
topRobson Reading Series presents
Sachiko Murakami and Nick Thran
Thursday, January 19, 2012, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
"These are angry poems. Proud and angry. But smart and quirky, too, daring us to tear up our death pledge to real estate, and rethink our citizenship in scandalous cities." --Meredith Quatermain, author of Recipes from the Red Planet
In Sachiko Murakami's second collection of poetry, Rebuild (Talonbooks, 2011), Vancouver has become as much a city of cranes and excavation sites as it is of ocean and landscape. Her poetry dissects the urban centre through its inhabitants' greatest passion: real estate, where the drive to own is coupled with the practice of tearing down and rebuilding, questioning in all its poetic ferocity our concept of "development."
Sachiko Murakami's first collection of poems, The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks 2008), was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She has been a literary worker for numerous presses, journals and organizations, and was a member of the Kootenay School of Writing. Most recently, she initiated ProjectRebuild.ca, an online collaborative poetry project. Originally from Vancouver, she now lives in Toronto where she co-hosts the Pivot Reading Series.
"Side-stepping the more likely subjects, Thran's poems freewheel through a rangy lyricscape of our urban, cultural life, from Picasso to Jessica Rabbit, from the Smurfs to Barry Bonds. Sprawling, irrepressible, Earworm darts with wild control and energy." --David O'Meara author of Noble Gas, Penny Black
Nick Thran's second collection, Earworm (Nightwood Editions, 2011), expertly combines wicked cleverness and a uniquely insightful perspective, tearing through a range of topics from pop culture to Caravaggio to cicadas, all unified by a perfectly balanced blend of thoughtful observation and a whimsical sense of humour.
Nick Thran's first collection of poetry, Every Inadequate Name (Insomniac Press, 2006), was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His poems have appeared in numerous publications across Canada, including Arc, The Best Canadian Poetry 2010 and Geist. Since growing up in western Canada, southern Spain and southern California, Nick has spent the last few years living in Toronto and Brooklyn, New York. He currently lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Sachiko Murakami and Nick Thran appear thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
topRobson Reading Series presents
Esi Edugyan and Jen Sookfong Lee
Thursday, December 15, 2011, 7pm
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
"The language of Edugyan's narrative moves us with its intrinsic power, grace, and soulful jazz cadences. Half-Blood Blues is an engrossing and unforgettable story." --Austin Clarke, author of The Polished Hoe
Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers, 2011) is an entrancing, electric story about jazz, race, loyalty and sacrifice. From the smoky bars of pre-World War II Berlin to the salons of Paris, author Esi Edugyan recreates a fascinating world alive with passion, music and the spirit of Resistance.
Esi Edugyan's debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne was published internationally. It was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, selected for More Book Lust and chosen by the New York Public Library as one of 2004's Books to Remember. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003, (ed. Joyce Carol Oates), and Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing. Half-Blood Blues was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Fiction, a finalist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and won the 2011 Giller Prize. Esi lives in Victoria, BC.
"This novel is a moving example of the ways in which memories can become 'ghosts, clinging to the body like the anchoring threads of a spider's web,' and chance encounters can lead to enduring love." -The Winnipeg Free Press
In the novel, The Better Mother (Knopf Canada, 2011), Jen Sookfong Lee evokes the storied streets and wild spaces of Vancouver like no other, in a way that is at once lush and stark. Set mostly during an unseasonably hot summer in 1982 when HIV/AIDS was spreading rapidly, The Better Mother brims with undeniable tragedy, but resounds with the power of friendship, reinvention and truth.
Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver's East Side. Her books include The Better Mother, The End of East (Vintage Canada, 2007) and Shelter (Annick Press, 2011), a novel for young adults. Her poetry, fiction and articles have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including TOK: Writing the New City, The Antigonish Review and Event. A popular radio personality, Jen was the voice behind "Westcoast Words" on CBC Radio One for three years. She appears regularly as a columnist on "The Next Chapter" with Shelagh Rogers and "Definitely Not the Opera" with Sook-Yin Lee. She lives in Vancouver, BC.
Esi Edugyan and Jen Sookfong Lee appear thanks to the support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
topEvent Archives:
- 2006/2007
- 2008
- Spring 2009
- Fall 2009
- Spring 2010
- Fall 2010
- Spring 2011
- Fall 2011
The UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square is located in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia:
800 Robson Street, Plaza Level
(between Howe and Hornby Street)
Vancouver, BC V6Z 3B7
Canada
Tel. 604-822-6453
Fax. 604-822-0863
Email. rsquare@interchange.ubc.ca
For directions downtown, visit: Directions to Robson Square
The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is located on the Point Grey Campus on Vancouver's West Side:
1961 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
Canada
For directions on campus, visit: UBC Campus Maps
Questions? Contact Us
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