Category: Literary Art

Literary Art

Scroll down to see all the literary art listings.

Love After the End: Joshua Whitehead & Friends

QAF + Talking Stick Festival: a day in celebration of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Artists

Sun Jun 18 | 3pm

Free cinq-à-sept reception to follow at 5pm

Roundhouse Performance Centre – 181 Roundhouse Mews

Joshua Whitehead, Curator

Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction is an exciting and ground-breaking fiction collection showcasing a number of new and emerging Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer writers from across Turtle Island, edited and compiled by renowned author Joshua Whitehead. Whitehead joins us along with fellow visionary Indigenous authors and anthology contributors for a literary event demonstrating how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives.

While this event is ticketed, the cinq-à-sept reception that follows at 5pm is free and open to all. This reception takes place in the Roundhouse Exhibition Hall and features a book signing with the participating authors, presented in partnership with Massy Books, and DJ set by DJ Kota, courtesy of Full Circle: First Nations Performance.

These two events are part of a day-long trilogy of events celebrating Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer artists. Please see Virago Nation Burlesque for our 7pm event.

Featured Artists:

jaye simpson

Joshua Whitehead

Nathan Adler

Nazbah Tom

Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead (he/him) is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary where he is housed in the departments of English and International Indigenous Studies (Treaty 7).

He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017) which was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. He is also the author of Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018) which was long listed for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and Canada Reads 2021.

Whitehead is the editor of Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, which won the Lambda Award in 2021.

Whitehead’s latest book Making Love with the Land was published in 2022 with Knopf Canada, exploring the intersections of Indigeneity, queerness, and, most prominently, mental health through a nêhiyaw lens. The book was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Award for Nonfiction.

Nazbah Tom

Nazbah Tom (Diné), somatic practitioner/poet. They are published in Lambda Literary Award winner Love After The End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction. As a somatic practitioner they use conversation, breath work, gestural work, bodywork, and somatic skills to guide groups through a process of embodied transformation.

Nathan Adler

Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler (he/they) is the author of Wrist, a windigo story written from the monster’s perspective, and Ghost Lake, an inter-connected collection of short stories (both published by Kegedonce Press), and co-editor of a dream-themed anthology of Indigenous writers called Bawaajigan ~ Stories of Power (Exile Editions). Nathan has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, a BFA in Integrated Media from OCAD, and a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Native Studies from Trent University. He is recipient of an Indigenous Voices Award for prose, a Hnatyshyn Reveal award for literature, and first-place winner of an Aboriginal Writing Challenge for poetry. His writing has also appeared in various magazines, websites, and anthologies (Exile, Bedside Press, Arsenal Pulp Press). He is Jewish and Anishinaabe, Two Spirit, and a member of Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation.

jaye simpson

jaye simpson (she/they) is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux Indigiqueer from the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. simpson is a writer, advocate and activist sharing their knowledge and lived experiences in hope of creating utopia. she is published in several magazines including Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Magazine: Green, GUTS Magazine, SubTerrain, Grain and Room. They are in four anthologies: Hustling Verse (2019), Love After the End (2020), The Care We Dream Of (2021), and Queer Little Nightmares (2022). Their first poetry collection, it was never going to be okay (Nightwood Ed.) was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award and a 2021 Dayne Ogilvie Prize Finalist and won the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry in English. Their next collection of poetry, a body more tolerable, is forthcoming Fall 2024.

THE MASC AND FEMME WE WEAR—A NIGHT OF READINGS FROM QTBIPOC WRITERS

Queerotica

Mon Aug 2 | 8 pm

Literary Readings | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop

Curated by Josie Boyce, slip into a little green something and enjoy readings by Vancouverite writers.

Queerotica is Apocalypterotica, in all the best possible ways. Survival through living your truth amidst the world wishing you wouldn’t. That’s us, singing, dancing and freeing our spirits in the ways we are able to given the apocalyptic death urge of humanity. Poetry, Performance, and spoken word at the end of the world, or is it the end of the word? It’s not easy being green, is it? Green in the punk sense, being as respectful to the stolen land (aka unceded) beneath you, and around you, the hierarchies of people here at the end of the world. But we can and we do scream queerotica at the structures around us creating our own language of performance. Queerotica need not be sexual or romantic in order to be erotic, and vice versa. Blowing minds since forever, and into never, our desires stoke hopeful fires lighting the Apocalypse of now. – Josie Boyce

This event is ASL Interpreted.

Featuring:

Soo Jeong

Tin Lorica

Lili Robinson

Anjalica Solomon

Sajia Sultana Kabir

A Conversation on Queer Mentorship

Lunch Discourse | July 25 | 12 pm

Hiromi Goto and Erica Isomura explore the nuances of intergenerational mentorship as queer POC writers.

Hiromi Goto, an emigrant from Japan, gratefully resides on the Unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil Waututh Territories. She’s the author of many books. Her first graphic novel, Shadow Life, with artist Ann Xu, is pending with First Second Books. Hiromi is currently being guided by land-based learning and at work on a second graphic novel.

Erica Isomura (@ericahiroko) is an emerging writer and community organizer living on unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil Waututh homelands. In 2019, Erica’s work won Briarpatch Magazine’s Writing In The Margins contest, selected by Alicia Elliott. She is coping with the pandemic by drawing quarantine comics and creating poetic installations in her living room window.

A Night of Storytelling

Literary Readings | July 22 | 7 pm |

A Night of Storytelling is back for its fifth year and once again hosted by the much-beloved Danny Ramadan, this time around as a new online experience. Spend a night in with the talented LGBTQ2+ voices of the CanLit scene. Danny brings prominent writers from the Queer and trans community into your homes as they explore their identities through the medium of the written word. A Night of Storytelling features readings from Billy Ray Belcourt, Amber Dawn, jaye simpson, Jillian Christmas, and Erin-Brooke Kirsh.

Curator Danny Ramadan is an award-winning Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker and LGBTQ-refugees activist. His novel, The Clothesline Swing, won multiple awards. His children’s book, Salma the Syrian Chef, is out now.

Jillian Christmas lives on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam people, where she served for six years as Artistic Director of Versəs Festival of Words. An educator, organizer, and advocate in the arts community, utilizing an anti-oppressive lens, Jillian has performed and facilitated workshops across the continent.

jaye simpson is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux indigiqueer writer with roots in Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. they often write about being queer in the Child Welfare system, as well as being queer and Indigenous. their work has been featured in Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Mag, GUTS Magazine and Room. simpson resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlilwəta’Ɂɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations peoples, currently and colonially known as Vancouver, BC.

Amber Dawn is a writer and creative facilitator living on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, Canada). She is the author of five books and the editor of three anthologies.

Erin Kirsh is a writer and performer. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in dozens of literary journals internationally. Her greatest accomplishment to date is that one time she painted her nails without getting the polish all over the place.

Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation, and lives in Vancouver. He is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at UBC. His books are THIS WOUND IS A WORLD, NDN COPING MECHANISMS, and A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY.