Leading up to the long weekend we’ve got a smattering of literary events around the province. If you’re looking for a good book to lounge with over the Canada Day weekend, you can find no better place to pick one up than at these events.
On Tuesday, June 27 on Vancouver Island, we’ve got two Harbour Publishing events for the marine curious. Local boatbuilding legend Barrie Farrell will be reading in Nanaimo on Tuesday from his autobiography, Boats in My Blood: A Life in Boatbuilding. Also on Tuesday, in Courtenay, Rick M. Harbo will give a lecture on his new book, Pacific Reef and Shore: A Photo Guide to Northwest Marine Life as part of the Courtenay and District Museum’s lecture series.
If poetry is more to your taste, you can’t miss the reading and panel discussion on Digital Poetics on Tuesday, June 27 with Ian Hatcher, Taryn Hubbard, and Clint Burnham. The three poets will be tackling the pervasiveness of the digital world and its impact on language, reading, and poetry.
On Thursday, June 29, the Vancouver Public Library hosts a reading and award presentations in honour of the “George” awards. Photographer and anthropologist Wade Davis was named the 2017 recipient of the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature for Wade Davis: Photographs (Douglas & McIntyre). Historian Rolf Knight has been named the 2017 recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Whistler Writers Festival is hosting a gathering of Sea to Sky Corridor writers for a celebration of Canada’s sesquicentennial on Friday, June 30. Sea to Sky Discovery: A Storytelling Celebration of Canada’s 150th Anniversary invites four established Canadian and Indigenous authors to share the stage with local writers and musicians. Authors Joan Haggerty, Susan Juby, Bev Sellars, and Paul Watson will read from their latest books, with Rebecca Wood Barrett moderating. Three winners of the Open, Youth and Indigenous categories of the Sea to Sky Discovery Writing Contest will read their award-winning entries.