Evelyn Lau is the Vancouver author of thirteen books, including eight volumes of poetry. Her poetry has received the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award, the Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a Canadian woman, and nominations for a BC Book Prize and a Governor-General’s Award. From 2011-2014, Evelyn served as Vancouver’s Poet Laureate.…
Previous Q&A
Q&A with Zalika Reid-Benta
Zalika Reid-Benta is a Toronto-based writer with an MFA from Columbia University. Her writing debut, an inter-connected short story collection, Frying Plantain has been nominated for the 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award presented by the Ontario Library Association and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Frying Plantain is can’t-put-down coming of age story, as Jamaican-Canadian Kara Davis navigates the complicated relationship between her mother and grandmother, her sometimes-friends-sometimes-bullies, and finally, herself.…
Q&A with Doreen Vanderstoop
Credit: Courtney Barr
Doreen Vanderstoop is a Calgary-based writer, storyteller and musician. As a storyteller/ musician, she intersperses songs among tales of all genres, including her own original stories. Doreen performs for audiences of all ages at schools, libraries, festivals, conferences and more. She leads workshops to ignite in others a passion for the power of story — oral and written. …
Q&A with Sheena Kamal
Sheena Kamal holds an HBA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and was awarded a TD Canada Trust scholarship for community leadership and activism around the issue of homelessness. Her debut novel The Lost Ones won the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, a Strand Magazine Critics Award and Macavity Award for Best First Novel.
Q&A with Ariel Gordon
With intimacy and humour award-winning poet Ariel Gordon walks us through the streets of Winnipeg and into the urban forest that is, to her, the city’s heart… Whether it is the effects of climate change on the urban forest or foraging in the city, Dutch elm disease in the trees or squirrels in the living room, Gordon delves into our relationships with the natural world with heart and style.…
Q&A with Carla Funk
“Vivid, hilarious, enormously entertaining” was one reviewer’s response (Andreas Schroeder) to Carla Funk’s first, and marvelous, memoir of her Mennonite childhood in Vanderhoof BC: Every Little Scrap and Wonder. She is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent, Gloryland. She was the first Poet Laureate of the City of Victoria, has taught at the University of Victoria Faculty of Fine Arts and in her living room, and is working on her second memoir.…
Q&A with Julie Paul
Julie Paul is the author of four books, the latest of which Meteorites has just been released. The Pull of the Moon received both an IPPY award and her hometown Victoria Book Prize, and was a Top 100 Book in The Globe and Mail. The Rules of the Kingdom was a finalist for both the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. …
Q&A with Eve Joseph
Eve Joseph is the author of Quarrels which won the prestigious 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize and shortlisted for Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize 2019, beautifully show her poetic play in tension with truths unravelling in unlikely images and re-forming insight and being. She also won the Huber Evans Non-Fiction Prize, BC Book Prizes for In The Slender Margin, 2015 and Nine Bouquets for Nine Sailors was shortlisted for Prism International Nonfiction prize, in 2013. …
Q&A with Darrel J. McLeod
Darrel J. McLeod is the author of Mamaskatch. A Cree Coming of Age. It has been described as “A heartbreakingly candid memoir of A Cree boy’s resilience and grace in the face of chaos and inter-generational tragedy.” Mamaskatch is a Cree word used as a response to dreams shared. This is Darrel’s debut and his memoir brings to Canada a stunning new voice.…
Q&A With Kate Braid
Kate Braid is the author of several award-winning poetry books and nonfiction books, ranging from her construction job experiences to Emily Carr to Glenn Gould. She left her carpentry career for what turned into a 23-year career teaching writing. Elemental (February 2018) is her most recent poetry collection. Currently, she divides her time between Victoria, Pender Island and Vancouver. …
Q&A with Sarah Weinman
Interview by Sharleen Jonsson
Sarah Weinman is the author of The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World (September 2018). She is editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and ’50s and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives. She covers book publishing for Publishers Marketplace, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major American and Canadian media.…
Q&A with Dina Del Bucchia
Poet and short fiction writer Dina Del Bucchia is the author of three collections of poetry, a recent book of short fiction, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, co-host of the Can’t Lit podcast, and a UBC Creative Writing instructor.She is also a senior editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine and the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series.…