WOTS is featuring the largest number of
Asian-Canadian authors
I have ever seen at this event
Word On The Street – book and magazine Fair
http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca
Friday – come to Kogawa House and meet author Susan Crean
Sunday – join us for Ricepaper booth @ Word On the Street
I always attend WOTS – and can sometimes be found:
1) staffing the ACWW Ricepaper Magazine booth
2) staffing the Historic Joy Kogawa House booth
3) hosting an event
4) listening at an event
5) searching for good book deals
6) searching for good silent auction deals
7) visiting my fellow library co-workers at CUPE 391 and VPL booths
8) one year I played accordion at CUPE 391 booth
Here
is a list of Asian-Canadian writers – + First Nations and Afro-Saxon
(as Wayde Compton describes himself).
I know each of them – except
Sachiko and Richard. I have made the list in chronological order, so you can start at 11am with Kevin Chong, and finish at 4:10 with Wayde Compton.
Kevin Chong was born in Hong Kong in 1975. He is the author of Baroque-a-Nova, Neil Young Nation, and a forthcoming memoir on horseracing. Beauty Plus Pity is his first novel in ten years.
JJ Lee is the menswear columnist for the Vancouver Sun
and broadcasts a weekly fashion column for CBC Radio in Vancouver. For
years, journalist and amateur tailor JJ Lee tried to ignore the navy
suit that hung at the back of his closet—his late father’s last suit. JJ
Lee will read from The Measure of a Man and…
Richard Wagamese is Ojibway but was separated from
his people for 20 years. When they reconnected, elders told him that he
was to be a storyteller. This has led to an award-winning career as a
writer and a journalist.
Sachiko Murakami’s first poetry collection, The Invisibility Exhibit,
was a finalist for the Governer General’s Award for Poetry and the
Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She is a past member of Vancouver’s
Kootenay School of Writing collective and now co-hosts the Pivot Reading
Series.
C. E. Gatchalian is the author of three books of
drama and one book of poetry. His plays have appeared on stages
nationally and internationally, as well as on radio and television. His
most recent undertaking, Crossing and Other Plays contains three plays: Crossing, Diamond and Ticks, that explore themes of sexuality…
Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in
Vancouver’s Eastside and is now the voice behind “Westcoast Words,” a
weekly writing column featured on CBC Radio One’s On the Coast and All Points West.
Evelyn Lau is the author of four volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a CBC movie starring Sandra Oh in her first major role. Living Under Plastic won the 2011 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Poetry.
Wayde Compton is a Vancouver writer whose books include After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region, Performance Bond, Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature and 49th Parallel Psalm. Compton is also a co-founding member of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, an organization…