Thursday, September 7, 2023
Doors at 7 pm / Readings at 7:30 pm
Free admission
In-person at Western Front (RSVP here)
Virtual attendance by livestream (Watch here)
Dear Friends,
The Capilano Review and Western Front are pleased to invite you to the next event in our monthly reading series, Dear Friends &. Please join us at 7:30 pm on Thursday, September 7th, 2023 at Western Front for an evening of poetry by Junie Désil, Tawhida Tanya Evanson, and Isabella Wang. The evening will be hosted by Deanna Fong.
The event will celebrate the close of Tawhida Tanya Evanson’s week-long Vancouver residency. Come celebrate with us!
Admission is free, but registration is required for in-person attendance. The event will also be available to virtual audiences by livestream.
Special thanks to Western Front for collaborating with us on this programming and to the Kootenay School of Writing for its additional support.
We can’t wait to see you,
The Capilano Review
Readers’ Biographies
Junie Désil is a poet. 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’s debut poetry collection Eat Salt|Gaze at the Ocean (TalonBooks, 2020) was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Junie currently lives on the traditional territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin, and Klahoose where she is currently working on a forthcoming poetry collection.
Tawhida Tanya Evanson is a poet, author, performer, producer, and Ashik. Her poetry collections include Bothism (2017) and Nouveau Griot (2018), and her debut novel Book of Wings won the 2022 CAM/Blue Metropolis New Contribution Prize. The French autotranslation Livre des ailes is forthcoming from Marchand de feuille in 2023. With a twenty-five-year practice in spoken word and music, she performs internationally and has released several studio albums and videopoems. She is president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation and director of Mother Tongue Media, which produces interarts projects including the upcoming Afrofuturist concert film CYANO SUN SUITE. Born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, she moonlights as a whirling dervish.
Isabella Wang is the author of the chapbook On Forgetting a Language (Baseline Press, 2019) and the full-length debut, Pebble Swing (Nightwood Editions, 2021), 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 completing a double-major in English and World Literature at SFU. An editor on the Room collective, she is also a youth mentor with Vancouver Poetry House, web coordinator with poetry in canada, and directs her own non-profit editing and mentorship program, 4827 Revise Revision St.
COVID-19 Safety
To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, we strongly encourage the use of masks at this event. Masks will be available free-of-charge at the venue for anyone who would like one. The windows of the Grand Luxe Hall will also be open for this event.
Accessibility
The Grand Luxe Hall is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of 26 stairs. While plans for a full building upgrade to facilitate access for wheelchair and scooter users are still underway, all events in the Luxe are made available virtually via high-quality livestream (see link above). Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here. Please feel free to contact Western Front directly at info@westernfront.ca or +1 (604) 876-9343 for specific access requests in advance of your visit. We are grateful for your patience as we work towards securing the long-term accessibility of this historic space.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Western Front for collaborating with us on this series and to The Kootenay School of Writing for its additional support.
