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This will be the stellar lineup:
Carolyn Nakagawa will read Roy Miki (1942-2024)
Ken Klonsky will read Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)
Holly Flauto will read Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Selina Boan will read Gwyndelen Brooks (1917-2000)
Location:
Simon Fraser Univeristy (515 W Hastings St) Room 2065.
Accessiblity: Note that the venue is wheelchair accessible and we are strongly encouraging wearing masks for our event to keep things as safe and accessible as possible for everyone.
Reader Bios:
Carolyn Nakagawa is a fourth-generation Anglo-Japanese Canadian poet, playwright, and researcher who makes her home in the territory colonized as Vancouver, BC. Her work addresses themes such as the nuances of identity in collective contexts, and history’s continuing impact on the present. Nakagawa’s poems have appeared in publications such as The Malahat Review, CV2, and ARC, and she has read her work at Powell Street Festival and Heart of the City Festival. She is currently seeking a publisher for her manuscript, Only Present. Her plays have been presented by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre and Ruby Slippers Theatre. She holds an honours degree in English Literature and Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies from the University of British Columbia.
Holly Flauto lives and writes on the traditional, ancestral and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Selilwitulh Nations. Her book of poetry, Permission to Settle ( Anvil Press), one of CBC Books Best Canadian Poetry of 2024, fills in the blanks of the application for Permanent Residency with a series of memoir-based poems that investigate the implicit biases in the colonial system of boxes and check marks that still seek to categorize "the other" and to harness it in the face of reconciliation. Holly grew up moving between the US and South America; she immigrated to Canada in 2008. Holly teaches writing in the English department at Capilano University.
Ken Klonsky, born in 1946, New York, NY was the Recipient of the 2018 Liberty Award for Excellence in the Arts, given by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. Writing credits include Taking Steam, a play written with the late Brian Shein, first performed at the Jewish Repertory Theatre of New York (1983) An anthology of short stories, Songs of Aging Children, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 1992. Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom, Chicago Review Press (2011), the spiritual autobiography of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, was written with Dr. Carter. Life Without, a novella, was released in April 2012 by Quattro Books. Freeing David McCallum: The Last Miracle of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, was published in 2018 by Chicago Review Press. Ken is Director of Innocence International, the late Dr. Carter’s organization conceived to help free wrongly convicted prisoners.
Selina Boan is a white settler-nehiyaw (Cree) writer and educator. Her debut poetry collection, Undoing Hours (Nightwood Editions), won the 2022 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry. Her work has been published widely, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She is a poetry editor for CV2.
Roy Miki
Roy Miki was born in 1942 on a sugar beet farm in Manitoba where his second-generation Japanese Canadian parents were forcibly settled during the Second World War. He moved to Vancouver in 1967. He has published widely on Asian Canadian writing, Canadian literature, cultural activism, and contemporary poetry, and has edited works by George Bowering, bpNichol, and Roy K. Kiyooka. He is the author six books of poetry, and his third book of poems, Surrender (2001), received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Roy taught in the English department at Simon Fraser University for over thirty years. He received the Order of Canada in 2006 and the Order of British Columbia in 2009.
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016, was, along with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, one of a unique trio of singer-songwriter-poets, among the best artists of our times. His mother, Masha Klonitsky, was the daughter of Solomon Klonitsky-Kline, Talmudic scholar and rabbi. His father, Nathan
Bernard Cohen, a clothier, died when Leonard was 9 years old. His paternal grandfather, Lyon
Cohen, founded the Canadian Jewish Congress. This heritage might explain Leonard’s lifelong engagement and struggle with religion in his artistic work. Cohen’s love poetry and song lyrics arose from body, mind and spirit, instinctive and bold, yet traditionally grounded. As T.S. Eliot said of the metaphysical poets, Cohen could ‘feel a thought’.
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker, orig. Dorothy Rothschild, (born Aug. 22, 1893, West End, near Long Beach, N.J., U.S.—died June 7, 1967, New York, N.Y.), U.S. short-story writer and poet. She grew up in affluence in New York City. She was a drama critic for Vanity Fair and wrote book reviews for The New Yorker (1927–33). Her poetry volumes include Enough Rope (1926) and Death and Taxes (1931). Her short stories were collected in Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933). She also worked as a film writer, reported on the Spanish Civil War, and collaborated on several plays. A member of the Algonquin Round Table, she is chiefly remembered for her wit.
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. A lifelong resident of Chicago, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968, a position she held until her death 32 years later. She was also named the U.S. Poet Laureate for the 1985–86 term.[In 1976, she became the first African-American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
