Tag Archive for: Author Talk

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Bite-Sized Lit: A Celebration of Short Story Month

Join us to celebrate Short Story Month this May with a panel of local authors specializing in the short story form. They will chat about the joys and challenges of writing short stories and will read from recent works. 

Panellists: Carleigh Baker, Shashi Bhat & Jen Currin

Carleigh Baker headshot  Shashi Bhat headshot  Jen Currin headshot

Panel Host: Cathy Stonehouse

Cathy Stonehouse headshot

This event will be presented in person at the New Westminster Public Library, and broadcast live via Zoom. All registered attendees will receive the Zoom link. Unfortunately the event will not be recorded.

Celebrating Poetry Month

Join us to celebrate New Westminster’s newest Poet Laureate and National Poetry Month! Janet Kvammen (new Poet Laureate), Alan Hill (former Poet Laureate) and Emily Molinari will read from their recent poetry. There will also be an open mic session at the end of the event. Registration for the 5-min open mic sessions will take place at the start of the afternoon.

 

Presented in partnership with Royal City Literary Arts Society.

art by Janet Kvammen.

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Family Storytime with special guest, BC author Stephanie Watterson

Join us for a very special family storytime in recognition of Neurodiversity Celebration week (March 17-23)!

We’ll begin with a short storytime with an NWPL librarian, followed by a readaloud of BC author Stephanie Watterson’s new picture book Septopus. Finally, we’ll share colouring pages and an informal Q&A with Stephanie.

Drop-in.

About the Author:

As her parents first chosen (adopted) child, Stephanie knew she was different. Despite her biological grandmother being illiterate, Stephanie started to read the swear words on the playground at the age of three. Today, she edits client’s manuscripts, empowers new BIPOC authors, and reads with fuzzy blankets at home. Stephanie was diagnosed with dyslexia, yet her literature processing skills were much higher than her peers, which inspired the start of Stephanie’s story in the form of Septopus. Her goal is to teach others about their own inner strength. She desires to empower those who are born different while building a better future for the next generation.

Author Talk: katherena vermette

False claims to Indigenous identity has gotten headlines across the country in recent years, with famous writers, academics, and artists uncovered as “pretendians.” The issue has been the subject of popular podcasts, feature articles in major magazines, and even a CBC documentary.

Bestselling author katherena vermette’s new novel, real ones, tells the story of sisters who must face their past trauma when their mother is called out for false claims to Indigenous identity. It’s a novel that explores the impact that pretendianism has on Indigenous peoples, and pays homage to the long-fought, hard-won battles of Michif (Métis) people to regain ownership of their identity.

For the second event of this lineup, join katherena vermette in conversation with award-winning writer Michelle Cyca.

NWPL members can access this talk in two ways:

  1. register to attend online here: crowdcast.io/@bclibraries-present and watch at home
  2. attend a live screening of the virtual event in the library (a good choice if your internet at home is unreliable or you’d like to chat with others about the presentation)

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BC Libraries Present: Indigenous Fiction

A series of compelling author talks presented virtually by BC’s Public Library Community

For the second year in a row, BC’s public libraries are hosting a virtual author series to bring new insights and voices to library users in every corner of British Columbia: BC Libraries Present. Public libraries are known as centres of dialogue on many important ideas in their communities. To build upon that role, Public Library InterLINK has brought together many libraries, both big and small, to host these events and provide access to award-winning authors to library users across the province.

For the second season of this series, the topic is Indigenous Fiction. Indigenous writers have been a crucial part of the literary landscape for a long time, with stories that bring important perspectives and capture the imaginations of diverse audiences. Indigenous fiction in particular is breaking ground with award-winning and bestselling novels that are shifting conversations and opening minds across the country.

The fall 2024 lineup will feature three phenomenal authors who have garnered top praise and huge readership across the country, providing an opportunity for readers across BC to be part of a live conversation of their essential new books.

Author Talk: Jessica Johns

Jessica Johns’s debut novel, Bad Cree, is a gripping story about intergenerational trauma that follows a Cree millennial who has haunting dreams about her dead sister and Kokum. This groundbreaking horror novel that grapples with the effects of grief and the power of kinship, got a country-wide spotlight on CBC Canada Reads 2024.

For the third event of this lineup, join Jessica Johns in conversation with award-winning writer Selina Boan.

NWPL members can access this talk in two ways:

  1. register to attend online here: crowdcast.io/@bclibraries-present and watch at home
  2. attend a live screening of the virtual event in the library (a good choice if your internet at home is unreliable or you’d like to chat with others about the presentation)

_____________________________________________________________________

BC Libraries Present: Indigenous Fiction

A series of compelling author talks presented virtually by BC’s Public Library Community

For the second year in a row, BC’s public libraries are hosting a virtual author series to bring new insights and voices to library users in every corner of British Columbia: BC Libraries Present. Public libraries are known as centres of dialogue on many important ideas in their communities. To build upon that role, Public Library InterLINK has brought together many libraries, both big and small, to host these events and provide access to award-winning authors to library users across the province.

For the second season of this series, the topic is Indigenous Fiction. Indigenous writers have been a crucial part of the literary landscape for a long time, with stories that bring important perspectives and capture the imaginations of diverse audiences. Indigenous fiction in particular is breaking ground with award-winning and bestselling novels that are shifting conversations and opening minds across the country.

The fall 2024 lineup will feature three phenomenal authors who have garnered top praise and huge readership across the country, providing an opportunity for readers across BC to be part of a live conversation of their essential new books.

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Author Visit with Kallie George (all ages, especially ages 4-10)

Come and enjoy a visit with celebrated BC author Kallie George! Kallie has something for everyone – she writes picture books, early readers, beginner chapter books, and even nonfiction.

Some of her best known works include the Heartwood Hotel, Bibbidi Bobbidi Academy, and Anne of Green Gables early chapter book series.

Kallie will share with us how she was inspired to become an author and empower and inspire participants to read and write their own stories!

 

Author Talk: Alicia Elliott

Following the success of her groundbreaking memoir A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, Alicia Elliott’s new novel And Then She Fell has quickly become an award-winning national bestseller. It’s a story about Native life, motherhood, and mental health that follows a young Mohawk woman who discovers that the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences.

Join Alicia Elliott in conversation with award-winning author Carleigh Baker.

NWPL members can access this talk in two ways:

  1. register to attend online here: crowdcast.io/@bclibraries-present and watch at home
  2. attend a live screening of the virtual event in the library (a good choice if your internet at home is unreliable or you’d like to chat with others about the presentation)

_____________________________________________________________________

BC Libraries Present: Indigenous Fiction

A series of compelling author talks presented virtually by BC’s Public Library Community

For the second year in a row, BC’s public libraries are hosting a virtual author series to bring new insights and voices to library users in every corner of British Columbia: BC Libraries Present. Public libraries are known as centres of dialogue on many important ideas in their communities. To build upon that role, Public Library InterLINK has brought together many libraries, both big and small, to host these events and provide access to award-winning authors to library users across the province.

For the second season of this series, the topic is Indigenous Fiction. Indigenous writers have been a crucial part of the literary landscape for a long time, with stories that bring important perspectives and capture the imaginations of diverse audiences. Indigenous fiction in particular is breaking ground with award-winning and bestselling novels that are shifting conversations and opening minds across the country.

The fall 2024 lineup will feature three phenomenal authors who have garnered top praise and huge readership across the country, providing an opportunity for readers across BC to be part of a live conversation of their essential new books.

Bridges Panel: Queer Asian Authors on Writing Chosen & Given Family

Join us at the library for an author panel discussion about queer Asian authors writing about their family – chosen or given. Family can be a loaded term for queer folks, and our panel aims to unpick some of the thorny issues, and provide some insight into the writing process.

The event will be live in person and also livestreamed via Zoom. All registered attendees will receive the Zoom link a few days before the event. It will not be recorded.

About the Panelists

Against a graffitied background, a person with dark, somewhat shaggy hair, looks into the camera and has their hands crossed on a railing in front of themKawika Guillermo  is the award-winning author of Stamped: an anti-travel novel, All Flowers Bloom, and Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir. He has also many short stories, and a video game based on his first novel. He has lived in Portland, Las Vegas, Seattle, Gimhae South Korea, Nanjing China, Hong Kong, and currently resides in Vancouver, Canada, where he works as an Associate Professor of Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Against a white background, an Asian woman with long dark hair looks toward the camera with a slight smile, her head tilted to the right.

 

Chinese Canadian author Catherine Lewis (she/her/hers) is a finalist for the Bisexual Book Awards’ Bi Writer of the Year. Her debut chapbook Zipless (845 Press), currently in its third printing, is a finalist for the Bisexual Book Award for Poetry. Her writing has been longlisted for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize, nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize, and published in The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, The Humber Literary Review, Pulp Literature, and Plenitude Magazine.

A graduate of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, Catherine is a two-time Banff Centre Literary Arts alumna. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, she lives in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

Against a grey background, an Asian person with short spiky dark hair, wearing a grey t shirt, looks into the camera with their head on a slight angle.

 

Candie Tanaka is a trans writer challenging the binaries continually reconstructed between self and other in literary fiction. Their work explores archive and memory in a futuristic context. They are a creative writing graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University, recently completed a MLIS (Master of Library and Information Studies) at the University of Alberta, earned a Certificate of Distinction from BCIT’s New Media Design and Web Development Program and have a BFA in Intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. In 2017, they were awarded a fully funded literary residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity that helped them further push the boundaries of their writing practice.

Candie lives in Vancouver, BC and is in the final revision stages of a first novel, working on a second manuscript, as well as penning a suite of poems about working on the waterfront. They have published work with Anvil Press, Guernica Editions and Orca Book Publishers. Their latest YA novel is called Baby Drag Queen and was released on April 11, 2023.

About the Moderator

Against a bright red graphic design background, an Asian woman with mid-length dark hair and wearing a pale shirt looks off to the left.Isabella Wang is the author of the chapbook, On Forgetting a Language, and her full-length debut, Pebble Swing, shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Among other recognitions, she has been shortlisted for Arc’s Poem of the Year Contest, The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Contest and Long Poem Contest, and was the youngest writer to be shortlisted twice for The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Essay Contest. She is in her Masters of Sociology at SFU. An editor on the Room collective, she is also a youth mentor with Vancouver Poetry House, poetry mentor with the UBC Learning Exchange, web coordinator with poetry in canada, and directs her own non-profit editing and mentorship program, 4827 Revise Revision St. 

Bridges Reading: Poetic Justice

Join us for a celebration of poetry! At this friendly session, former New Westminster poet laureate, Alan Hill will host and guest poets, Jónina Kirton and Jessica McMillan will read from their work and answer any audience questions. The event will end with an open mic time for others to share their work. The open mic list (5 minutes each) will be available for sign up at the beginning of the event.

The event will be live in person and also livestreamed via Zoom. All registered attendees will receive the Zoom link a few days before the event. It will not be recorded.

About the Poets

A smiling older woman with grey hair looks into the camera.Jónína Kirton, a Red River Métis and Icelandic poet 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. She just released her third book, Standing in a River of Time.

In a black and white photo, a woman with a thick headband and dark hair looks sideways into the camera with a slight smile.

 

Jessica Lee McMillan (she/her) is a poet and teacher with an English MA and creative writing certificate from SFU’s The Writer’s Studio. Her work has appeared in over 30 publications across Turtle Island including Crab Creek Review, The Humber Literary Review, Funicular, Pinhole Poetry, and Rose Garden Press. Jessica was a finalist for The Fiddlehead’s 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest. She won the 2022 Royal City Literary Arts Society Write On! Contest for Poetry and has received poetry nominations for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. She lives on the land of the Halkomelem-speaking Peoples with her little family and large dog

In front of some trees, a smiling older man in a bright blue shirt and glasses looks into the camera.

 

Alan Hill was born in the UK and immigrated to Canada in 2005. He is the former Poet Laureate of the City of New Westminster, BC (2017-2020), former president of the Royal City Literary Arts Society (RCLAS), and was the editor and curator of A Poetry of Place: Journeys Across New Westminster, published in partnership with New Westminster Arts Services. His writing has been published internationally and his poetry has appeared in Event, CV2, Canadian Literature, The Antigonish Review, subTerrain, Poetry is Dead, among others. He works in the field of community development and immigrant settlement and lives in New Westminster, BC. His book In The Blood, was published by Caitlin Press in 2022. 

About RCLAS

A purple and grey logo reading Royal City Literary Arts Society RCLAS

The Royal City Literary Arts Society’s mission is to maintain and build a welcoming community of writers and readers, to support the goals of writers at all stages of their development, and to promote an appreciation of all forms of literary arts.  We are committed to building community capacity through the literary arts, promoting literacy, social connection and cross-cultural understanding and the central importance of the written and spoken word in community life.

Book Celebration

Join us for an author reading, Q&A, and book signing with Shashi Bhat, Jen Currin and kitchen mckeown. Jen and Shashi are New Westminster-based authors and have new books are launching this spring! kitchen is an emerging poet with a unique voice. This event is hosted by Junie Desil and we will celebrate the new books and engage the authors in conversation about writing that envisions other worlds and ways of being.

Please register for this event (below) so we can accommodate numbers.

About the Books

A realistic painting of two peach halves and some plums on a branch with a wasp crawling on the table in front of them is the background for the title and author, Death By a Thousand Cuts, Shashi Bhat.From the Governor General’s Award-shortlisted author Shashi Bhat comes Death By a Thousand Cuts, a breathtaking and sharply funny collection about the everyday trials and impossible expectations that come with being a woman. What would have happened if she’d met him at a different time in her life, when she was older, more confident, less lonely, and less afraid? She wonders not whether they would have stayed together, but whether she would have known to stay away. 
A writer discovers that her ex has published a novel about their breakup. An immunocompromised woman falls in love, only to have her body betray her. After her boyfriend makes an insensitive comment, a college student finds an experimental procedure that promises to turn her brown eyes blue. A Reddit post about a man’s habit of grabbing his girlfriend’s breasts prompts a shocking confession. An unsettling second date leads to the testing of boundaries. And when a woman begins to lose her hair, she embarks on an increasingly nightmarish search for answers. With honesty, tenderness, and a skewering wit, these stories boldly wrestle with rage, longing, illness, and bodily autonomy, and their inescapable impacts on a woman’s relationships with others and with herself.

On a turquoise blue map, bright pink grid of streets and waterways is behind the words, Disembark, Stories by Jen Currin.

 

Award–winning author Jen Currin presents remarkable and sometimes magical new stories of queer friendship and love, against the backdrop of city life.

The stories in Disembark feature queer characters navigating new worlds, new circumstances, and new methods of relating to the people around them. With resonant imagery and clear, lyrical prose, Currin weaves vibrant narratives showcasing queer relationships—be they platonic, romantic, or somewhere in between. A banshee shacks up with a lesbian couple in a rocky relationship, a lonely teen is gifted a knife by their mother’s boyfriend, a queer woman finds herself heartbroken when her best friend fails her at a crucial moment, and a young alcoholic hashes things out with their mother in the afterlife. In modes both realist and fantastic, the profound and eloquent stories in Disembark provide a glimpse into the unexpected, offering insight into the ways we relate in this world and in worlds beyond.

 

About the Authors

Against a grey backdrop, a south Asian woman with long dark hair smiles into the camera.

Shashi Bhat is the author of the story collection Death by a Thousand Cuts, and the novels The Most Precious Substance on Earth, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for fiction, and The Family Took Shape, a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Her fiction has won the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and appeared in such publications as The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Best Canadian Stories, and The Journey Prize Stories. Shashi holds an MFA from the Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Cornell University. She lives in New Westminster, BC, where she is the editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine and teaches creative writing at Douglas College.

Against a dark backdrop, a white woman with short blonde hair stares intently into the camera. She wears a light pink shirt.

 

Jen Currin’s Hider/Seeker: Stories won a Canadian Independent Book Award, was a finalist for a ReLit Award, and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book. They have also published five collections of poetry, most recently Trinity Street (Anansi, 2023); The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010), which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for a LAMBDA, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and a ReLit Award; and School (Coach House, 2014), which was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and a ReLit Award. A white settler of mixed, mostly western European ancestry, Currin lives on unceded Qayqayt, Musqueam, Kwikwetlem, and Kwantlen Nation territories in New Westminster, BC and teaches creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

 

in a black and white photograph, a white person with short dark hair looks into the camera with a tilt to their head.

kitchen mckeown’s debut chapbook i need not be good was published in February 2022 by Rahila’s Ghost Press and shortlisted for the 2023 bpNichol Chapbook Award.​ Their poems are forthcoming or have appeared in SAD Mag, Poetry Magazine, Room, Peach Mag, Poetry is Dead, The Ex-Puritan, and Bad Nudes. They were awarded the George McWhirter Prize for Poetry in Winter 2020. ​

 

About the Host

Against a black background, a black woman with long hair looks sideways into the camera.Born of immigrant (Haitian) parents on the traditional territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka in the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg), Junie Désil brings a wealth of experience and an unwavering passion for effecting positive change. With a career spanning over two decades in the non-profit sector, Junie has consistently dedicated herself to uplifting and empowering communities made vulnerable and marginalized. Most recently, Junie worked in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside (DTES) in various roles from frontline support worker to director of operations and everything in between, in support of women living and working in the DTES. Junie’s knowledge extends to critical areas such as human resources, leadership, strategic planning, organizational change, and governance. Her expertise spans various aspects of community engagement and development, encompassing workshop design, training initiatives, project management, and program implementation.

Junie also finds time to write, coach, and consult. Her first book released in 2020, Eat Salt | Gaze at the Ocean, received wide acclaim. She also serves as a mentor in The Writer’s Studio program at SFU. Currently residing on the traditional territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin and Klahoose, Junie works for Vancity as manager of diversity, equity, inclusion and reconciliation, and she is working on her second poetry collection.

About Wildfires Bookshop

On an orange background the text in pale pink, WildFires Bookshop.

Wildfires Bookshop is a queer + south asian owned space, located on the stolen and occupied territories of the Halq’emeýlem speaking peoples. We curate books that celebrate both historically and presently excluded voices and stories, and serve as a community-building space that encourages the joy of learning, connection, and care.