After a nice summer break, we are pumped for our September reading! We're back at Outsiders and Others (938 Howe St #100) on September 13th. We are also patnered with Word Vancouver for this one. Check out their other events!
Here's our awesome lineup:
Marlo Browne reads Langston Hughes (1901 - 1967)Mallory Tater reads Maeve Kelly (1930 - 2025)
Kate McCandless reads Mitsu Suzuki (1914 - 2016)
Whitney French reads Essex Hemphill (1957 - 1995)
Reminder that this event is masks-required and there will be masks available at the door.
Readers Bios:
Marlo Browne is an award-winning Barbadian multi-hyphenate artist who has published 5 poetry books and currently lives in Langley. Marlo has performed and featured at many events and has converted some of his poetry into short films. To date, he has released three short films- ‘I’m Sorry’ in 2023 and ‘Dear Single Mom’ and ‘Invisible’ in 2025.
Mallory Tater is the author of four books: This Will Be Good, The Birth Yard, Lockers are for Bearcats Only & Soft Tissue (forthcoming, ECW, 2028). She was the publisher of Rahila’s Ghost Press, a now-retired chapbook press. Mallory currently lives in Vancouver, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing.
Whitney French (she/her) is a writer, educator and publisher. She is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter (University of Regina, 2019) and Griot: Six Writers Sojourn into the Dark (Penguin Random House Canada, 2022). Her novel-in-verse, Syncopation is forthcoming with Wolsack and Wynn Press (Fall, 2025). Whitney French is also the co-founder and publisher of Hush Harbour Press. Currently she is an Assistant Professor teaching creative writing at the University of British Colombia.
Kate McCandless is co-guiding teacher at Mountain Rain Zen Community in Vancouver. She writes, translates, teaches and gardens on the traditional, unceded lands of the Coast Salish Nations. Her engagement with Japanese language, poetry, Zen and nature extends over more than forty years.
Dead Poet Bios:
Maeve Kelly (2 July 1930 – 1 August 2025) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, and feminist activist based in Limerick, celebrated for her portrayals of women's struggles against social and domestic constraints in mid-20th-century Ireland. She began publishing fiction in her forties, with her debut short story in 1971 and a Hennessy Literary Award in 1972, followed by collections like A Life of Her Own (1976) and Orange Horses (1990), novels such as Necessary Treasons (1985) and Florrie's Girls (1989), and poetry collections including Resolution (1986) and A Last Loving (2016).
Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes. As he wrote in his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.” [source]
Essex Hemphill was born in Chicago and grew up in Southeast Washington, DC. A poet and performer known for his political edge, he openly addressed race, identity, sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and the family in his work, voicing issues central to the African American gay community. His first collections of poems were the self-published chapbooks Earth Life (1985) and Conditions (1986). His first full-length collection, Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992), won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award. His work is included in the anthologies Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1986) and Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS (1993).
Mitsu Suzuki was the widow of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center. A former resident and beloved teacher of tea ceremony at City Center, she was the author of two collections of haiku: “A White Tea Bowl: 100 Haiku from 100 Years of Life” and “Temple Dusk: Zen Haiku. [source]
