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 pm on Thursday, September 5, 2024 at Western Front for an evening of poetry by Tina Do, Rhoda Rosenfeld, and Gerry Shikatani. The evening will be hosted by Deanna Fong.

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 and the BC Arts Council for their generous support of this program.

We can’t wait to see you, 

The Capilano Review

Readers’ Biographies

Tina Do is a poet based on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Səlil̓wətaɬ, Skwxwú7mesh, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, and xʷməθkwəy̓əm Nations (Vancouver, Canada). Her poetry, which delves into themes of introspection, love, relationships, and reflects on oft-inconsequential minutiae of life, grapples with questions such as: what does it mean to love the people and places around us? You can find her work in The /tƐmz/ Review, Best Canadian Poetry, Canadian Literature, Room Magazine, and Canthius. In her downtime, she is an unashamed dinosaur aficionado, anxious plant parent, and Shark Week fanatic. 

Rhoda Rosenfeld is a visual artist and poet born in Tio’tia’ke/Mooniyang (Montréal, Canada), present in the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil Watuth (Vancouver, Canada). Her work attends to perception, consciousness, behaviour, transformation, chance and the indivisible.

Gerry Shikatani is a writer based in Toronto, Canada. Since 1970, his works have ranged from the textual, visual, aural, performance to experimental film. He is the co-editor of the seminal anthology of Japanese-Canadian poetry Paper Doors (1981), and has created documentaries and commentaries for CBC Radio, and published articles on travel, sports, and gastronomy across Canada and abroad. An international dining critic and commentator and expert on all things Spanish, Shikatani is the founding director of a writers retreat in Granada, Spain honouring Federico Garcia-Lorca. He holds Spain’s Official Cross in the Order of Civilian Merit granted by The King of Spain.   

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.

COVID-19 Safety

Masks are optional but encouraged 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.