Browsing “Vancouver Book Club”

Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.

Cathleen With’s first book, skids (Arsenal Pulp, 2006), about street kids on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, was short-listed for a ReLit Award. Among her many adventures, Cathleen has worked at a camp for disabled kids in Squamish, a bakery in Hawaii and a Greek deli in Australia. She served as a drama educator in Kathmandu, a caregiver at Mother Theresa’s Home for the Sick and Destitute in Calcutta, an English teacher to former sex trade kids in Cambodia, and as a teacher in Inuvik, NT and in Seoul, Korea. Having Faith in the Polar Girls’ Prison (winner of the BC Book Prize’s, Ethel Wilson Fiction Award), is her first novel.

What books have changed your life?

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson saved me when I was young. As did anything by Flannery O’Connor. This is such a great question, but a difficult one to answer as so many books affected me at different times in my life. Two years after travelling to India, I read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, and it changed how I looked at my photos. Djuna Barnes and Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale also affected me deeply.

The one book you always recommend is…

The Bone People by Keri Hulme and The Year of the Flood by Atwood.

Where is your favourite place to crack open a book in Vancouver?

I could say Turk’s, Delaney’s on Denman, Rhizome, but mostly cozy-mo in bed ;)

What’s next on your reading list?

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

I’ve been lucky to have had so many: Keith Maillard, Alison Acheson, Steven Galloway, Elizabeth Harvor, and Jack Hodgins. And Jack’s book, Passion for Narrative, is insanely helpful for a writer.

Do you have a favourite story with Vancouver connections?

Sophie by Emily Carr

How do you like your books served up best – audio books, graphic novels, used paperbacks, library loaner, e-reader…

I am still a compulsive buyer and used buyer/library loaner. I still love to go to events and buy the book from the actual writer–I think that’s so important if you can. To meet that person and have them sign their baby, and then go read it–my fave thing to do!

Photographs courtesy of Cathleen With.

Who is your favourite Vancouver/Lower Mainland writer?

We have so many amazing writers here on the West Coast that it’s hard to keep up! I’m going to stay safe and say that recently I’ve enjoyed work from Nikki Reimer and Micheal Christie. I’m looking forward to new work from Nancy Lee, Claudia Casper, and Shaena Lambert.

	Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.
	Olivia B. is a slam poet, writer, dancer, aspiring actor and generally strange Vancouverite. A two-time member of the Vancouver Youth Poetry Slam Team and the 2011 Grand Slam Champion, Olivia whiles away the days by spreading ineffable insanity and frightening frivolity amongst unsuspecting civilians.

What are you currently reading? Your thoughts on it?
After hearing little snippets about it from various people over a number of years, I am finally reading Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins. The writing is very quirky, sometimes hilariously profound, and steeped in the essence of ’70s hippie counterculture. I must admit I often have a silly, paranoid, personal-standards-of-political-correctness-gauging mental commentator while I’m reading, but since reasoning with said commentator (“Consider when this was written, my dear!” “Get over yourself a little bit!”), I have found Even Cowgirls Get the Blues to be extremely entertaining.

Photo courtesy of Olivia B.

How do you like your books served up best – audio books, graphic novels, used paperbacks, library loaner, e-reader…?
Argh! Anything but e-readers! I guess I’m one of those bad environmentalists who don’t believe in replacements for having a real, solid book in one’s hands. In certain circumstances I’ll go for an audio book, but for the most part I’m hopelessly devoted to tangible, delicious, ink-and-paper-wasting literature. Mmm.

What book or story impressed you as a child?  Were you obsessed with any particular ones?
I was completely obsessed with Harriet the Spy, along with Louise Fitzhugh’s other stories. Wherever I went, I brought a composition notebook and pencil with me so I could pretend to be Harriet and write down observations–okay, fine, lies–about everyone I came across. Always a sucker for classic fiction, I was also pretty enamoured of anything by E. Nesbit or Edward Eager.

What books have changed your life?
Don’t laugh at me, but I’m going to state the obvious answer for my entire generation here and say “Harry Potter”. Harry Potter is my past, present, and future!

Others are The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones, which is a childhood favourite that has somehow leeched onto my heart; A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs; 1984 by George Orwell; and, to be honest, The Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

I might add that pretty much every book I read changes my life to some degree, even if that’s just because I mess up my sleeping schedule by staying up all night reading…

Favourite Vancouver/Lower Mainland writer?
I don’t know if I have a “favourite”, but right now I’m really excited about lisa b., who is a spoken word poet I discovered through the Van slam scene. I find Lisa’s writing to be very thought-provoking, image-rich, and poignant. I’m a fan.

The one book you always recommend is…
Paper Towns by John Green!

What’s next on your reading list?
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

Your life story is published tomorrow. What’s the title?
Hopefully something incredibly convoluted, abstract and confusing like: Here Lies Olivia B: A Ninja and Pirate of a Gentleman Who Saved a Few Lives During the Zombie Apocalypse and Stuck with Harry Until the Very End.

Photo courtesy of Olivia B.

		Print Matters is a celebration of the printed form and all the awesome local people who bring it to you: literary journals, publishers, magazines, hand presses, and independent booksellers.
		This week we share a drink and conversation with Clélie Rich and talk about Room magazine, collective changes, and the Roomies.

Room magazine is “Canada’s oldest literary journal by and about women”. The first issue came out under the name A Room of One’s Own, a pull quote from Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay by the same name, and the famous quote, “It is necessary to have five hundred [pounds] a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry” is still found on each issue’s cover.

Entering its 35th year in publication, Room  has come a long way from its roots as “A Feminist Journal of Literature and Criticism” to its current, more inclusive, “A Space of Your Own” where their loyal readers find the finest emerging women’s writing 4 times a year.  Clélie Rich knows Room because over the past two decades she’s twice been a member of the Growing Room Collective, the group of volunteers who handle all the editorial, production, and administration of Room.  I spoke with Clélie about the benefits of working in a collective, the editing process, and how Room has changed over the years.

Photos by C. Kwan

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most. I grew up in England to Canadian and British parents, mooched around a bit, studied literature at university then joined all kinds of bands and disappeared off on travels by boat and foot and hitching and so on. Ended up staying at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris before disappearing again. Now in Vancouver and can be found in the philosophy and mythology and poetry sections of the city’s various libraries. -Rowan Coupland

What books have changed your life?

Probably T.S. Eliot’s Selected Poems (faber & faber), which was my first encounter with a poetry I could love. Then Harry Partch’s Genesis of a Music, which is a very eloquent introduction to how music can be let out of its box, by a former hobo and outsider musician.

Rowan at Shakespeare and Co.  Photo Courtesy of Rowan Coupland.

Where is your favourite place to crack open a book in Vancouver?

Stanley Park, maybe by Beaver Lake. When it’s not raining.

What writer would you love to see read their work?

Walt Whitman!

What is the most cherished item in your library?

Probably a hundred and something year-old copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest with an inscription by the original owner: ‘if you wish my name to see, turn to page 93.’

The one book you always recommend is…

The Waves By Virginia Woolf -nothing in the entire novel is said, but everything is said. Friends grow up and die like moths and waves. It’s beautiful.

How do you like your books served up best–audio books, graphic novels, used paperbacks, library loaner, e-reader…

Used paperbacks, maybe with inscriptions from the original reader.

What books make you feel like a kid again?

Tintin-The Prisoners of the Sun

	ReVIEWS, preVIEWS, interVIEWS, and overVIEWS: here’s where you’ll find out what the Vancouver Book Club team thinks about the literary scene in Vancouver. What you should read, where you should go, who you should sit up and notice.
	It’s literary overload as this week brings you the Shoot it! book launch, W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, Mashed Poetics, and our own VBC Live with Charlotte Gill.

Sunday January 22 – Book Launch: David Spaner’s Shoot it!

Former Vancouver Province film critic David Spaner, has just released his second book, Shoot It!: Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film and Arsenal Pulp Press is holding a book launch at People’s Co-op Bookstore. The location of the launch is fitting as the first half of Spaner’s book looks at the history of the the Hollywood movie studio system including the clashes, often physical and violent, between studios and union members.

The second half of the book is a look at the history of independent film scenes in seven different countries (including Canada, of course).

David Spaner will give a brief talk about his new book and take questions; book signing and refreshments to follow!

When: Sunday Jan. 22 • 2 – 5 pm
Where: People’s Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Dr., Vancouver
www.davidspaner.com
www.arsenalpulp.com

Tuesday January 24 – W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series

	Sean Cranbury & Co. are at it again, this time celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series with a stellar line-up of established and up-and-coming writers.
	Featuring: Angie Abdou Zsuzsi Gartner David Lester Arley McNeney Garry Thomas Morse Jen Neale Ayelet Tsabari
	Books for sale by author. All proceeds go to the writers. Cash bar. Music. Live streaming. Conviviality. Jokes. Hosted by Sean Cranbury and Dina Del Bucchia
	If the last big literary event held at the W2 Performance Space (Giller Light Vancouver) was any indication, this is sure to be a great evening. And on a Tuesday!

When: Tuesday January 24, 7 – 10 pm
Where: W2 Media Café, 111 W. Hastings St., Vancouver (enter through the Woodwards Atrium)
Cost: $5 (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Real Vancouver Writers’ Series is 100% volunteer-driven. All proceeds go toward supporting future W2 programming and the writers who participate.

Friday January 27 – Mashed Poetics: Gordon

Mashed Poetics is back! An evening of music and poetry as selected writers read the results of the musical influence of a particular song. This time ’round sees The Barenaked Ladies’ album Gordon acting as muse.

BNL cover band ENID will be playing all of the songs on the album GORDON, interspersed with very cool poems by 15 different and talented writers.

Poets and their songs include…

1. “Hello City” -Matt Hogan
2. “Enid” -Laurie Bricker-Cherry
3. “Grade 9″ -Roger Blenman
4. “Brian Wilson” -Chris Gilpin
5. “Be My Yoko Ono” -Diane Tucker
6. “Wrap Your Arms Around Me” -Magpie Ulysses
7. “What a Good Boy” -Chris Masson
8. “The King of Bedside Manor” -RC Weslowski

Intermission

9. “Box Set” -Duncan Shields
10. “I Love You” -Wilhelmina Salmi
11. “New Kid (On the Block)” -Sean McGarragle
12. “Blame It on Me” -Johnny Scoop
13. “The Flag” -Alberto Cristoffanini
14. “If I Had $1000000″ -Sonja Littlejohn
15. “Crazy” -Laurel Albina

When: Friday January 27,  8 – 11 pm
Where: The Kozmik Zoo, 53 W. Broadway
Cost: $10 at the door.
Doors at 8:00 Show at 8:30

Saturday January 28 – VBC Live: An Intimate Chat with Charlotte Gill

Come join us, Vancouver is Awesome’s very own Vancouver Book Club, for an afternoon with Charlotte Gill, author of Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe. We (that is, us and you) will be chatting with Charlotte about the book and her experiences.

This book has been getting a lot of buzz over the past few months and was recently shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

Read our review of Eating Dirt and visit the Event page.

When: Saturday February 28, 2-4 pm (doors at 1:30 pm)
Where: Project Space, 222 E. Georgia St., Vancouver

There will be books and refreshments for sale.

www.charlottegill.com
www.dmpibooks.com
www.projectspace.ca

Print Matters is a celebration of the printed form and all the awesome local people who bring it to you: literary journals, publishers, magazines, hand presses, and independent booksellers. filler space   filler space   This week we look at Megaphone Magazine, Vancouver’s biweekly street paper. Street vendors buy copies for 75¢ each and sell them for a suggested donation of $2, keeping all the money they make.

During last year’s Heart of the City Festival, I found myself at the InterUrban Gallery for “Writing Our Stories,” an event that brought together participants from three Downtown Eastside writing groups: the Megaphone Magazine Writing Group, Intrepid Pens and the DTES Studio Society. While I had previously read a few issues of Megaphone, hearing the writers read their work was a powerful experience, and I was compelled to find out more about the magazine. A little while later I got together with Sean Condon, Megaphone‘s Executive Director, and we talked about the magazine’s beginnings, its writers program, and its importance as a vehicle for empowerment.

How did Megaphone start?
It’s actually kind of got a long history, but I’ll try not to make it too long. So, the idea of a street paper first actually started in New York City and it was done in the late ’80s, early ’90s. And from there it just exploded around the world. And now there are probably more than, say, 115 street papers around the world. Different sizes, different styles,  but all the same concept of selling a paper at a cost to a homeless or low-income vendor who then sells it for profit on the street.

Vancouver’s first street paper started in 1992 and was know as Spare Change. And it was pretty well known and it did well, but when the founding publisher/editor left, it changed hands a few times, it changed names. It was known as Street Corner and it definitely diminished. Amazingly there was this core of 5 to 6 vendors who kept it going with some support and were still going out and selling it. At that point there was two [papers] and one of them was Street Corner and it was literally a couple of photocopied papers stapled together.

So that’s where I got involved and there was a need to jump in and help out. I’d been introduced to it and I’d learned a little bit about it through some journalism work so we started to build it back up. We saw that it was a project that had once been really successful in Vancouver and there was clearly a ton of examples of it being successful around the world. You could definitely see the impact solely by the fact that there were these core vendors. It had been so transformative in their lives that they needed it still and they wanted it to keep going. So we said “We’re on to something here, we’ve got to bring this back up.”

So what year was this?
2006. And at that time it was just something part-time I did. I was working at a the Westender and Adbusters, and so we just kind of did it at nights and when we could and I got lots of help from everybody involved. A lot more people got involved. We changed the name to Megaphone in 2008. That’s where we’ve been at. We just keep trying to grow, trying to get more people to learn about it, trying to get more vendors.

The vendors have grown from, when I got involved there were about 5 or 6 and now there are about 30-35.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most. Sean Cranbury is a writer and book lover living in east Vancouver. He is the Executive Editor of Books on the Radio Projects – which is an evolving series of book-related collaborative projects that use the Internet and public performance to build networks and do other cool things with the creative writing/publishing communities in Vancouver and across Canada. He is a curator with the W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, co-creator of the Advent Book Blog, and an organizer of the epic books and technology unconference, Bookcamp Vancouver. Sean also speaks about topics like ‘Social Media Use for Writers’ and ‘Piracy vs Free Content’ at the SFU Summer Publishing Workshops and the Surrey International Writers Conference. He also has a day job.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It’s an interesting book. A kind of elegant, fantastic fable based around a magical carnival. There’s dueling magicians and acrobats, contortionists, big tops, apple cider, etc. The book has generally received raving reviews – emphasis on the raving more than the review – and I hope that it finishes as the triumph that it is setting itself up to achieve.  Though I have a suspicion that the book is over 100 pages too long.

How do you like your lit served – audio books, graphic novels, used paperbacks, library loaner, e-reader, other?

Paper and ink is the preferred method of transference. It’s more durable, travels through time better, doesn’t suffer outages, battery drain, digital hindrances. Audio is also great. It delivers the voice and the cadence, which can be important. Second hand stores are crucial to the survival of literature and should not be underestimated, same goes for libraries.  e-Readers are a temporary distraction provided by a confused industry. Their greatest legacies will be to choke countless landfills with their meaningless obsolete dead touch screen technologies, the memory of e-ink, and the false promise of convenience.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

ReVIEWS, preVIEWS, interVIEWS, and overVIEWS: here’s where you’ll find out what the Vancouver Book Club team thinks about the literary scene in Vancouver. What you should read, where you should go, who you should sit up and notice.   This past week local author JJ Lee was announced as a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Nikki Reimer takes the measure of Lee’s book.

JJ Lee at Modernize Tailors. Photo by Simon Hayter for National Post (C).

I take the jacket off and hold it to my face. After all the steam and tears and cuts and pricked fingers and knotted loose threads, the scent lingers, if only in my imagination—cigarettes, sweat, vanilla, him.

Lee, 284.

Today I am wearing a vintage black-with-white-polka-dot polyester blouse. Two buttons fasten tightly at the wrist. Wide pointed collar. The shirt is genuine 1970s vintage and doesn’t really breathe, though I appreciate the way it fits me better than most modern dress shirts: it’s more fitted in the underarms, bust and waist and more generous in the hips. (They don’t make clothes for pear-shaped girls like they used to.)

Hipster bonus points: like nearly half of my current wardrobe, the blouse belonged to my dead grandmother. Though I’ve washed it countless times since it came into my possession in the late 1990s (she died in 2008), I still sense—or imagine I sense—her aroma: Anais Anais cut with cigarettes and musk. When I wear her clothes I am also wearing her. Kids, take note: clothing, and scent memories, are powerful, heady stuff. To put on somebody else’s clothes is to engage in homage, revision, reinvention, necromancy.

JJ Lee, local fashion critic, true gentleman and stylish man-about-town explores the black art of inherited clothing in his recent non-fiction work, the GG-nominated and Charles Taylor shortlisted The Measure Of A Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit (McLelland & Stewart, 2010) with wit and humility.

Part biofiction, part historical survey of the modern suit, The Measure Of A Man traces Lee’s journey from childhood to manhood in the shadow of an imperfect father. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>