LITERARY ARTS

Do you Slam?

You hear it all the time in the music you listen to. Raw, unscripted poetry. This is the essence of slam. Slam poetry has quickly become the voice of our generation.

Have you ever wanted to learn the art of slam, and develop your voice as a writer? Here is your chance. UBC Okanagan is hosting a Poetry Slam Camp at the UBC Okanagan campus from July 23rd-25th.

Enter to be one of only twenty poets between the ages of 15 and 18. If selected, youíll stay in residence at UBC Okanagan and get the opportunity to write with and learn from university students and local poets. You will have the chance to perform your work with other students at a slam competition and be eligible to win some amazing prizes.
It gets better: you will also get to attend a poetry slam featuring some of the Okanaganís finest poets and spoken word talent. You will be able to connect with other writers, explore the UBC Okanagan campus, and learn the art of slam poetry.

The Poetry Slam Camp is sponsored by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan and Canwestís Raise a Reader program.

Enter by June 7th, 2010. Pick up your pen and paper or your video camera and write or record a poem. Next, email your poem or a send a YouTube link to creativestudies.ubco@ubc.ca. Only twenty of the best poets will be selected. So the question is: do you slam?

Contact Information:

Ryan Trafananko: Poetry Slam Camp Coordinator.
Email: poetryslamcamp2010@gmail.com

Debbie Henderson: Poetry Slam Camp Coordinator.
Email: poetryslamcamp2010@gmail.com

Nancy Holmes: Head of the Department of Creative Studies
UBC Okanagan 3333 University Way, Kelowna B.C. V1V 1V7
Email: nancy.holmes@ubc.ca

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05 Jun 2010

UBC Okanagan is hosting a poetry slam camp for high school students at the UBC Okanagan campus from July 23rd-25th.

Eligible poets should be between 15 and 18 years of age and live in the southern interior of British Columbia. Deadline to apply for a seat: Monday, June 7, 2010.  See website: http://web.ubc.ca/okanagan/creative/events/slamcamp.htm

The Poetry Slam Camp is a great opportunity for high school students to harness their creativity by learning the craft of poetry. During the Poetry Slam Camp, students will learn about slam poetry, develop their material, and practice performance skills with the help of poets and educators. Students will also have the opportunity to attend a slam performance featuring the Okanagan’s finest poets and perform at a slam of their own.

The Poetry Slam Camp will be two fun filled days of writing, performance and learning. Once selected, the student will arrive on the UBC Okanagan campus in Kelowna after lunch on July 23rd and attend activities and performances throughout the day. Students will get a taste of campus life by staying overnight in the dorms at UBC and will be fed on campus. On July 24th students will workshop their new poems and in the evening with compete in a slam of their own.

Students will depart from the UBC Okanagan campus on July 25th after a breakfast and wrap up session. Workshops and activities will be instructed by UBC Okanagan students and local poets. This is also a great opportunity for students to explore the UBC Okanagan campus and the great courses it has to offer.

Each selected poet will be required to pay a $50 fee for the two day camp. This includes accommodation, meals, and classes.

This slam is sponsored by the Department of Creative Studies in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and Canwest’s Raise a Reader program.  

For more information contact:
Ryan Trafananko: Poetry Slam Camp Coordinator.
Email: poetryslamcamp2010@gmail.com
Debbie Henderson: Poetry Slam Camp Coordinator.
Email: poetryslamcamp2010@gmail.com
Nancy Holmes: Head of the Department of Creative Studies
UBC Okanagan 3333 University Way, Kelowna B.C. V1V 1V7
Email: nancy.holmes@ubc.ca

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28 May 2010

The man who defined Canada during the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, with his heart-melting, soul-stirring poem “We Are More” is coming to Kelowna to help raise funds for Project Literacy

Shane Koyczan has added Kelowna to his sold-out Cross Canada Tour. At 8 p.m. June 25, Shane will perform his spell-binding one-man show at Rotary Centre for the Arts Mary Irwin Theatre to help raise funds to support Project Literacy Kelowna Society’s free adult education program. Tickets are $35, available at SelectYourTickets.com (box office 250-717-5304).
 
Shane was already an international star when the average Canadian discovered the power of his talent during the Vancouver Olympics. As millions sat spellbound, relatively few had seen this superstar of poetry in action or knew that he has shared the stage with legendary poets Maya Angelou, Quincy Troupe, Utah Phillips and Margaret Atwood.
 
 “We are honoured that Shane Koyczan will lend his voice to our cause,” says Barb Hagan, Executive Director of Project Literacy.”Every year the need for our literacy services grows, but securing adequate funding to meet the demand is extremely challenging.”
 
Since 1986 Project Literacy’s fully trained volunteer tutors have provided one-to-one instruction in reading, writing, math and English language to over 4,000 men and women; enabling them to find work, enroll in further education, enter trades and apprenticeship programs and improve the quality of life for themselves and their families. With Shane Koyczan’s help, this year Project Literacy will assist more than five hundred individuals to reach their literacy goals.
 
With his rhythmic verse in high gear, Shane Koyczan navigates his audience through social and political territory with a furious honesty and a tender humanity that has brought audiences to their feet in New York, London, Edinburgh, Sydney and Los Angeles. Winner of the U.S. Slam Poetry Championship and the Canadian Spoken Word Olympics, Koyczan is truly an extraordinary talent that has blown the dust off of the designation “poet”.

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28 May 2010

Allan Mow, who in the 1980s achieved national prominence as the author of an indigenous ghost story that captivated the reading public in the province of British Columbia, where many continue to believe the story was not fiction, died on Thursday, March 18 in the capital city of Victoria, where he had lived since 1985. He was 64.

A spokesperson for the Victoria Police Department said Mr. Mow's body had been recovered from the Victoria Harbour, and that the Regional Coroner's office had ruled it a suicide. Mr. Mow's sister, Regina Diane Marias, of Victoria, said her brother had suffered from depression and paranoia for most of his life, as a result of the 1980 events from which he first earned his reputation. Mr. Mow had been missing since March 17, when he attended a gala promoted as "The St. Patrick's All Night Long Boat Party" aboard the Victoria Princess Cruise Ship.

It is presumed that Mr. Mow jumped overboard, as officials for Victoria Princess did not notice or report any altercation, nor indeed note Mr. Mow's disappearance until contacted by Victoria Police. A flyer for the cruise, as well as the circled question, "Do You Need a Girlfriend?" in an advertisement for Seductresses Unlimited, a local escort agency, were found by Ms. Marias in Mr. Mow's downtown bachelor suite, who searched the apartment when her brother failed to return her phone calls for several days. Citing the agency's policy of client confidentiality, a spokesperson for Seductresses Unlimited said she could not confirm police allegations that Mr. Mow was accompanied on the cruise by a woman known to operate under the alias "Candi". Before disconnecting she added, unprovoked, "Can I just say, though? - poor Allan! He'd been with us from the beginning."

A semi-reclusive author who developed a national cult following shortly after working as a news reporter for The Daily Clarion, then a daily, now a weekly, in Valley Southside, British Columbia, Mr. Mow is credited as the inspiration for what emerged as a national anti-property development movement, which raised awareness of the importance of preserving the architectural heritage of small towns across Canada. In The Frollett Homestead, a five-part series published in 1980, Mr. Mow claimed to have met, and interviewed, an octogenarian "witch doctor", named Tobias Elliott, who Mow believed to be the last living descendant of a now-extinct, migratory aboriginal tribe called the Chippeweyans.

In Mr. Mow's story, the tribe had unique psychokinetic powers which they employed for many uses, including the resistance of real estate development. Soundly debunked by historians across the country, many of whom pointed out that Mow had simply borrowed, and loosely modified, the name of his fictional tribe from the Chipewyan, a tribe of Dene, who presently number approximately 11,000. The Frollett Homestead circulated for years amongst conspiracy theorists and fans of the paranormal, not as a work of fiction, but as a historical document. Many of his detractors have long maintained that it was Mr. Mow himself, who began photocopying and distributing the story to such groups, a claim the author denied repeatedly.

The more dedicated amongst Mow's followers called themselves "Homesteaders" and organized, particularly during the movement's apex from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, national conventions, where they speculated on the actual, physical location of the Homestead, and sold a range of Frollett Homestead-inspired paraphernalia, including a now-legendary T-shirt that bears Mow's likeness and the legend "Mow Knows"; in 2007, one such shirt, from the original 1984 screen printing, sold for a record $1,650, on the Internet auction site eBay to an unknown buyer in Fort Nelson, BC.

Mow was surprised by the popularity of his story, and maintained a critical distance from it. Although he never disavowed its authenticity, neither did he formally offer his support of the Homesteaders movement, which lobbied the City of Valley Southside, unsuccessfully, to name May 15 "Allan Mow Day". That date has achieved a special place in Homesteaders lore as the date of publication of the last of the five installments, and the last day, in 1980, of Mow's employment at The Daily Clarion. For "professional misconduct" Mr. Mow's employment was terminated by the newspaper, which has maintained official silence about Mow's tenure there, and the newspaper's subsequent vilification by Homesteaders, who have accused The Daily Clarion of destroying, or concealing, evidence that would verify the claims made by Mr. Mow in The Frollett Homestead. The Daily Clarion did not respond to interview requests.

In contrast to his public reputation, as a man possessed of many of the same mystical skills attributed to Tobias Elliott, and a man believed by his followers to be able to alter destiny psychokinetically, Allan Mow was described by friends as difficult and uncommunicative, a long-haired barfly who spent the majority of his time altering the patterns of his own mind, usually through gin. Beloved by bartenders throughout Victoria, and also in Vancouver, where he travelled occasionally to speak at Homesteaders conventions, Mr. Mow did not again obtain regular employment as a journalist following his termination from The Daily Clarion. From 1981 until 1987 he worked irregularly as a roofer in Victoria, until freelance writing, usually related to The Frollett Homestead, and speaking fees from conventions, both the result of the persistence and growth of the Homesteaders movement, supplied Mr. Mow with enough income to quit this line of work. In an interview with the Victoria Times Colonist in 1992, on the tenth year anniversary of the publication of The Frollett Homestead, Mr. Mow said, "F--- it, I was too old to roof anymore anyway. Have you ever tried it? S--- gets scary up there."

Born in Victoria in 1946, Allan Mow attended the University of Victoria for a year in 1965 before moving to Regina, Saskatchewan where he obtained an undergraduate degree in journalism from The University of Regina, in 1968. He worked on small- to mid-sized weekly, and, later, daily, newspapers without distinction, save for the Frollett affair, for the duration of his short-lived journalistic career. According to Ms. Marias, most of his writing jobs were terminated by the employer for insubordination, earning him a reputation that forced him to the otherwise unremarkable Valley Southside where a combination of sunshine, and, briefly, a girlfriend, gave Mr. Mow the most fruitful, if short-lived, period of his career.

"Allan, may he rest in peace, didn't even know himself anymore what was true or not," Ms. Marias said. "Let's be honest: my brother drowned himself to death about twenty years before he drowned himself to death. Witch doctor? Please. What would I say to all of those people who think he was? Pull your head out, I guess? Pull your head out, and get a job. Oh, and stop phoning me." She went on to explain that she had had to change her telephone number more times than she would "care to count," as a result of overzealous Homesteaders seeking biographical information, or updated contact information, about her brother.

In addition to Ms. Marias, Mr. Mow is survived by three grandchildren.

A long-rumoured book based on the original stories, written by Okanagan College professor Colin Snowsell, will be published in mid-April.

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01 Apr 2010

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Invocations

READINGS FOR RYGA
» Thursday 25 March 2010 | 5 pm
» The Bohemian Café, 524 Bernard Avenue
An informal afternoon hour showcasing ideas and people in the Okanagan creative economy. Join us as writer and editor Sean Johnston, artist Jude Clarke and special guests introduce the new issue of the groundbreaking literary publication Ryga: A Journal of Provocations.

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» $2 at the door. Refreshments are available at a modest cost.
» Seating is limited, please reserve yours HERE

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Writers Explore the Imagined Weight of Art at Ryga Celebration

"How pleasant it would be to live where a farm produced a living, where a man could find warmth and comfort in the companionship of a good tractor, and plants which grew tall and strong, where there was no more fruitless labour in working the soil by hand, or tormenting horses until they were just as weary and sick as the men who drove and guided them, where there were proper schools, and a kid didn't have to begin working the moment he stood upright. Where there was no fear and no want to twist and damage the soul and body of man." So wrote George Ryga in his 1963 novel Hungry Hills, which last year was made into a feature film. An outspoken and perceptive social critic and writer, Ryga has inspired generations through his novels, plays and broadcasting work.

On Thursday, March 25th at 5 pm the ongoing weekly Okanagan Institute Express series at the Bohemian Café presents Invocations: Readings for Ryga. Join us as writer and editor Sean Johnston, artist Jude Clarke and special guests introduce the new issue of the groundbreaking literary publication Ryga: A Journal of Provocations.

This is the first in a series of readings, performances, publications and other initiatives planned for the coming months as part of the Ryga Festival of the Arts presented by the Okanagan Institute and the Ryga Initiative at Okanagan College.

These initiatives are a result of the seeds George Ryga planted in the rich soil of the creative imagination of the Okanagan and Canada. Whether directly through his own work, or indirectly through the incredible impact his art in all forms had in defining a new vision of what's possible and who we are, George Ryga remains a seminal figure in Canadian life and letters.

By showing us the possibilities of cultural and critical engagement, practically and metaphorically, Ryga's creative works continue to inform a transformative vision of society. Our goal is to honour and further his life and work by showcasing the talents of writers and artists who identify with his struggles with creative identity. In a world often bereft of hope and opportunity, our best writers and artists do not flinch from representing the possible and giving idealism voice.

Sean Johnston is the author of A Day Does Not Go By (Nightwood, 2002), which won the 2003 ReLit Award for short fiction, and the novel All This Town Remembers (Gaspereau, 2006). He's also published two chapbooks: A Long Day Inside the Buildings (with Drew Kennickel; JackPine Press, 2004) and Bull Island (Gaspereau, 2004). Sean teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Okanagan College, and is the Editor of Ryga: A Journal of Provocations.

Of the first issue of the Ryga Journal, he wrote, "We take our name from Ryga, a political writer, to honour his commitment to his art and to his world. His legacy is this: he was a human living in a community and that community was living in a nation, that nation in a world. He wrote without nostalgia about the world that lived around him. He believed the artist had a responsibility to write counter-narratives, to treat the marginalized among us fairly, to challenge the formal boundaries of his art without losing the humanity of the characters that drive it. These characters live and move according to a complex, tentative political agreement that must not be taken as natural, but must be interrogated in every way."

Jude Clarke is a visual artist and author living in Vernon BC. She was trained in visual arts at Notre Dame University in Nelson, Three Schools in Toronto and the University of Regina. She has been exhibiting her work in private and public art galleries for over twenty-five years. She is the author of The Language of Water, a literary work of non-fiction published by Thistledown Press, Saskatoon, in 2002. She is currently working on a writing/painting collaborative project with her husband, writer John Lent, and is also preparing work for a five-person exhibition at Cityscape Gallery in North Vancouver, June/July 2010.

Of the image, Midnight Over Kalamalka which appears on the cover of the second issue of Ryga, she writes, "You are floating on your back in Kalamalka Lake. At the edge of your vision is the shoreline. You watch the sun drop with a final benevolent glint behind the far mountain. You hear children splashing and the distant drone of a helicopter scanning the mountains for wildfire. Far beneath you, shadows are held motionless, weighted to the floor of the lake. They are rising now, breaking the water's surface, finding air in the wide-open sky. They shift, break apart, form shape, take on colour, drift into line, chatter, and rise further. They are unremorseful children, thumbing their noses at gravity. It is impossible to deny their invitation, their beckoning, so you let go, feel your body lift and rise above the surface of the water. There now. You are airborne."

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER ONLINE CLICK HERE


Invocations: Readings for Ryga takes place at the Bohemian Café. This marks the 131st event the Okanagan Institute has held since the Express series got underway in July 2007.
Express has played host to many Okanagan luminaries, including former deputy secretary general of Amnesty International Derek Evans, artists Lee Claremont and Gary Pearson, BC Book Award nominee Don Gayton, CBC Literary prize winner poet Harold Rhenisch, distinguished editor and author Jim Taylor, poet laureate and professor John Lent, animator and filmmaker Jim Cliffe, community activist Don Elzer, dancer David LaHay, architect Jim Meiklejohn, culinary artist and writer Heidi Noble, broadcaster Marion Barschel and many others from a wide range of creative fields.

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The Okanagan Institute is a group of creative professionals that has gathered around the goal of providing events, publications and services of interest to enquiring minds in the Okanagan. We partner with individuals, organizations, institutions and businesses to achieve optimal creative and social impact.
Our mission is to ignite cultural transformation, catalyze collaborative action, build networks and foster sustainable creative enterprises. We invite the participation by all members of the creative community.

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20 Mar 2010

Some fabulous literary events at UBC Okanagan over the next two weeks!
 
World Water Day Poetry Slam!—Tuesday, March 23, 2 – 4 PM – the Ballroom at the University Centre (UNC 200) at UBC Okanagan. 

Slam about water for prizes.  Contact ubcowaterworks@gmail.com for more info about registering.
 
Lisa Robertson:  one of Canada’s most gifted experimental writers, will appear on Friday, March 26  at 7 PM at the Alternator Gallery, 421 Cawston Avenue, Kelowna. 

Her books include XEclogue, Debbie: An Epic, The Weather, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, The Men and most recently Magenta Soul Whip.  Rousseau’s Boat will be out this spring.  She currently teaches at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and in Fall 2010 will be writer in residence at Simon Fraser University.  This reading is sponsored by The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okangan, the Canada Council for the Arts, UBC Okanagan Bookstore and the Alternator Gallery.  The reading is free of charge and open to the public.  For more information, contact Michael V. Smith at 250-807-9706 or email at michael.v.smith@ubc.ca.
 
Building a Career as a Fiction Writer—Free workshop in ARTS 115 at UBC Okanagan, 1:30 – 3:30, Tuesday, March 30. 

The Department of Creative Studies at UBC Okanagan invites the public to join editor Chris LabontО (Acquiring Editor, Fiction -- Douglas & McIntyre),  Ian Weir (an award-winning screenwriter, playwright and novelist) and Adam Lewis Schroeder (novelist and short story writer) as they conduct a blend of lecture and lively discussion, providing professional advice and practical tools for individuals interested in building a successful career as a fiction writer.   Topics include tips on how to write effective query letters; strategies for approaching publishers, editors, and agents; and insights on completing grant applications. Also discussed: marketing and self-promotion; working with magazine and book editors; negotiating a book contract; pitching; and making a living when writing income is sparse.   Call Nancy Holmes at 250-807-9369 or email nancy.holmes@ubc.ca for  more information.

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17 Mar 2010

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Icons and Idioms

SNOWSELL ON APPLES
» Thursday 18 February 2010 | 5 pm
» The Bohemian Café, 524 Bernard Avenue
An informal afternoon hour showcasing ideas and people in the Okanagan creative economy. Join us as professor and writer Colin Snowsell explores the nature of political and social power in the Okanagan through the story of his family, and launches his chapbook On Apples.

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» $2 at the door. Refreshments are available at a modest cost.
» Seating is limited, please reserve yours HERE

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Writer Follows in Family Tradition of Outspoken Commentary

Who remembers that Kelowna's mayor from 1930 to 1939 was a furniture dealer named O.L. Jones? And that Kelowna voters sent Jones to Ottawa three times - in 1948, 1949 and 1953 - as the CCF candidate for the riding of Yale? Who remembers that his campaign manager was named Snowsell? The Snowsells once owned and operated over 100 acres of orchard land in the Glenmore Valley. This is not, except in the distance cast by history and forgetfulness, their most significant contribution. The Snowsells' greater influence on the Okanagan was in their socialism, in their activism, and in their support of the CCF and the NDP. If they pioneered anything, it was BC socialism.

The Snowsells would be horrified to know history had remembered them as landowners. Their life was spent in struggle against the propertied classes, and from the 1930s to the 1960s they were known for the courage and pigheaded tenacity with which they fought to keep the valley, the province, and the country out of the clutches of conservatives. It just so happened that their struggle was against the two most powerful politicians the province has known.

On Thursday, February 18th at 5 pm the ongoing weekly Okanagan Institute Express series at the Bohemian Café presents Icons and Idioms: Snowsell On Apples. Join us as professor and writer Colin Snowsell explores the nature of political and social power in the Okanagan through the story of his family, and launches his chapbook On Apples.

When you're driving down Snowsell Street - as the old portion of Glenmore Road will be named, as soon as the Glenmore Bypass is operational - you'll be driving down a street named after the one local family that came within a hair of upsetting the conservatives' rise to power. That's the message of On Apples, a chapbook by Colin Snowsell, a writer and professor of Communications at Okanagan College and the great grandson of Edwin and Felicia Snowsell, the pioneer Glenmore orchardists who arrived in the Okanagan in 1925.

"When the city announced it was renaming Glenmore Road, my students started asking me if I was one of THOSE Snowsells," said Snowsell. "What bothered me wasn't that they didn't know who the Snowsells were anymore - Kelowna's a pretty big city now and the name's not that common - but that the city didn't seem to know who the Snowsells were either. Did they own orchards? Yes. But so what? It's what the family did in the community, not so much what they owned, that should be remembered."

Both Felicia Snowsell and her son Frank, former head of the provincial NDP/CCF and one-time MLA for the now-defunct provincial riding of Saanich, opposed W.A.C. Bennett on the ballot in tightly contested races. In the essay - part lament, part revisionist history - Snowsell speculates how Kelowna, and the province, might have looked, had the contests gone a different way.

The novelist Caterina Edwards describes Snowsell, who is also a fiction writer whose novella, entitled The Frollett Homestead, is scheduled for release in March, as "more than a promising writer: he is a full-blown talent."

Colin Snowsell holds a MA in Communications Studies from the University of Calgary. He is finishing a PhD through the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University.

Snowsell's essays have been published in This Magazine, Maisonneuve and PopMatters. Earlier versions of Snowsell have appeared on MuchMusic (in the role of Calgary alt-indie impresario), obtained a journalism diploma from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and worked in corporate communications at Greyhound Canada's head office in Calgary.

Prior to joining the Communications faculty at Okanagan College, Snowsell taught professional communication at the University of Saskatchewan.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER ONLINE CLICK HERE

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Icons and Idioms: Snowsell On Apples takes place at the Bohemian Café. This marks the 126th event the Okanagan Institute has held since the Express series got underway in July 2007.
Express has played host to many Okanagan luminaries, including former deputy secretary general of Amnesty International Derek Evans, artists Lee Claremont and Gary Pearson, BC Book Award nominee Don Gayton, CBC Literary prize winner poet Harold Rhenisch, distinguished editor and author Jim Taylor, poet laureate and professor John Lent, animator and filmmaker Jim Cliffe, community activist Don Elzer, dancer David LaHay, architect Jim Meiklejohn, culinary artist and writer Heidi Noble, broadcaster Marion Barschel and many others from a wide range of creative fields.

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The Okanagan Institute is a group of creative professionals that has gathered around the goal of providing events, publications and services of interest to enquiring minds in the Okanagan. We partner with individuals, organizations, institutions and businesses to achieve optimal creative and social impact.
Our mission is to ignite cultural transformation, catalyze collaborative action, build networks and foster sustainable creative enterprises. We invite the participation by all members of the creative community.

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12 Feb 2010

Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan
3.Description : Event date: Wednesday, February 10, 2010, at 7:00 PM
Location: Art 218, UBC Okanagan



Michael MacLennan divides his time between Toronto,Vancouver and Los Angeles. His plays have been produced throughout Canada, Europe and the US. His books include Beat the Sunset, Grace, The Shooting Stage, Last Romantics, Life After God and The Good Egg. He has won a Jessie, two Voaden Prizes, Theatrum National Playwrighting Award and was twice nominated for the Governor General's. As screenwriter, Michael has been nominated for five WGC Screenwriting Awards. He was co-executive producer of Queer as Folk, creator/ executive producer of Godiva's and Jpod, and consulting producer on Being Erica.
This is a free public event.

Sponsored by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan, UBC Okanagan Bookstore, The Canada Council for the Arts, Okanagan Regional Library. and the Alternator Gallery. 

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30 Jan 2010

A Reputation for Tolerance: examining contested geographies of belonging in Kelowna, BC

DATE: Thursday, January 28th at 2:15pm in the UBC Okanagan Library room 306

Cindy Holmes is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies and holds a SSHRC doctoral fellowship at UBC Okanagan. Her dissertation research draws on critical race, queer feminist and spatial theories to examine how interlocking forms of violence, safety and belonging are imagined and produced in different contexts and scales. Alongside her academic work, she has worked with community groups for over 20 years in the areas of violence against women, violence in the lives of LGBTQ people, health promotion and anti-oppression education. Cindyís forthcoming and most recent publications are: (Forthcoming January 2010). Troubling normalcy: Examining ëhealthy relationshipsí discourses in lesbian domestic violence prevention  in J. Ristock (Ed.) Intimate partner violence in LGBTQ Lives. New York: Routledge; and (2009) Destabilizing homonormativity and the private/ public dichotomy in North American lesbian domestic violence discourses in Gender, Place and Culture 16(1), 77-95
This event is free and open to the public.

CONTACT: David.jefferess@ubc.ca or Lindsay.balfour@ubc.ca

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22 Jan 2010

Join authors Gillian Wigmore and Matt Radar on January 14th at 6pm as they read from their original works. This event is free and will be held in room Art 106 at UBC Okanagan. Everyone is welcome.



Gillian Wigmore grew up in Vanderhoof, BC, and currently lives in Prince George. Her first book soft geography was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry prize and won the Relit Poetry Award in 2008. Recently, she has been shortlisted for both the Malahat long poem prize and the Great BC Novella conest.



Matt Radar is the author of two collections of poetry, Miraculous Hours (Nightwood 2005) and Living Things  (Nighwood 2008). Published in magazines, journals, and anthologies around the globe, Rader's poems and stories have been nominated for numerous awards including The National Magazine Award, the Pushcart Prize, The Gerald Lampert Award, and The Journey Prize. He teaches creative writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in British Columbia's Lower Mainland.

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05 Jan 2010