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Word Vancouver returns with plenty of New West talent

Word nerds and lit lovers will be gathering next week for the annual Word Vancouver festival – and New Westminster talent is part of the fun.
New West writers, Word Vancouver
Clockwise from top left: Jen Currin, Ariadne Sawyer, JJ Lee, Lozan Yamolky and Alan Hill are among the New West residents involved in this year's Word Vancouver festival.

Word nerds and lit lovers will be gathering next week for the annual Word Vancouver festival – and New Westminster talent is part of the fun.

A number of local authors and organizations are involved in the annual festival, which brings book lovers and authors together for workshops, discussions, exhibits, performances and other word-related activities at venues around the city from Sept. 26 to 30.

It culminates in a day-long festival on Sunday, Sept. 30 at Vancouver Public Library’s central branch, with exhibitor tents from a variety of publishers and organizations along with a host of readings by authors and poets.

This year’s New Westminster participants include:

 

ROYAL CITY LITERARY ARTS SOCIETY

The society is hosting a reading of its members on Sunday, Sept. 30 at 3:40 p.m. at the Community Writers Stage, featuring Alan Hill, Nasreen Pejvack and Lozan Yamolky.

Hill, who was chosen in February 2017 as New Westminster’s fourth poet laureate, is the co-manager of the Poetry New West reading series and has had his poetry published in numerous print and online journals in North America and Europe. He’ll be reading from his book The Narrow Road to the Far West.

Pejvack is a published author, whose novel Amity was shortlisted for B.C.’s Ethel Wilson Book Prize. She’s working on a collection of poems and short stories and a second novel. She’ll be reading from her work Paradise of the Downcasts.

Yamolky, born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq, migrated to Canada with her family in 1995. She works as a freelance interpreter and volunteers helping refugees and newcomers arriving in Canada. Yamolky believes in the power of poetry to heal and connect us, and she’ll be reading from her work Counting Waves.

 

EVENT magazine with JJ Lee

For 47, EVENT magazine has published the best in contemporary new poetry and prose, making it one of Western Canada’s longest-running literary magazines. EVENT will be hosting a panel, Overcoming Writer’s Block, with New Westminster-based moderator JJ Lee, along with Joanne Arnott, Shashi Bhat and Wayde Compton.

Lee is best known for his The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit, which saw him shortlisted for the 2011 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the 2012 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction, the 2012 B.C. Book Prizes Hubert Evans Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2012 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize.

 

JEN CURRIN

Currin teaches creative writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic Univesity. She has published four collections of poetry (The Sleep of Four Cities, Hagiography, The Inquisition Yours and School) and has just published her first collection of stories, Hider/Seeker.

She will be reading from Hider/Seeker at an event called Questions of Identity, taking place at 12:10 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 30 at the suspension bridge of the Vancouver Public Library.

 

ARIADNE SAWYER

Sawyer is the co-host and co-founder of World Poetry (www.worldpoetry.ca) and co-host and co-producer of The World Poetry Café on CFRO 102.7 FM. She’ll be moderating a reading on behalf of World Poetry, with Roger Blenman and Kona, called An Exploration of Black Male, Black Female Speaking About Their Self-Images and Those That Others Have of Them. It’s on Sunday, Sept. 30 at 1:15 p.m. at the library’s Sunrise Plaza.

 

See www.wordvancouver.ca for the full festival schedule.