Word Vancouver in Conversation with LGBTQ2S+ Curator Hasan Namir
We are so thrilled to announce our 2021 LGBTQ2S+ Guest Curator Hasan Namir! To welcome him to the Word Vancouver team and community we asked a few get-to-know-you questions, so let’s learn a little more about Hasan. Enjoy!
What are you most excited about in joining the Word Vancouver team?
I've always been a fan of Word Vancouver. It was one of the first festivals that featured me as a reader. The festival always brings a diverse group of writers and readers and it attracts an engaging audience. Last year, because of the pandemic, Word Vancouver went virtual so it allowed for many people to join from all over the world. I'm excited that this year it will be virtual again and I'm hoping that it will attract a diverse audience that will engage with the readers. I'm super excited for all the panelists, workshops. I'm super excited to be working with Bonnie Nish, Molly Cross-Blanchard, Ali Denno, Alison Tedford, and everyone at Word Vancouver!
As a curator what is something unique that you bring to the festival?
As a queer poc writer, I'm bringing a unique objective lens to the festival. I bring fresh energy, enthusiasm, and my passion to the work. I have been thinking excitedly about the events and the readers/panelists and the workshop for the LGBTQ2s+ stage. I hope to start meaningful conversations about the ways that can bring our community together through literature and current events.
What first sparked your love of writing?
When I was young, growing up, I had all these ideas in my head. I loved reading Arabic stories when I was in Iraq. My aunt was a murder mystery author and my grandfather was a poet, so writing was in my blood. I knew that writing was the output for my ideas, my stories. When my family immigrated to Canada, I found comfort in English books. Reading helped me learn English. My passion for writing grew and solidified when a short story of mine, Linton Street Stop, was published and I was so young. In High School, for English, my projects were always creative writing stories. I consider myself lucky because I had a lot of support from my family. They encouraged me to continue writing.
Your poetry book Umbilical Cord (Book*hug Press) comes out this September and I was wondering when did you know you had a collection of poetry for this book? Did the writing process occur alongside entering into parenthood or with the reflection of entering into it?
When it comes to writing poetry, whenever I'm writing poems, I always position them within a collection context. What I mean by that is that I write my poems, knowing that this will be part of a collection. As a poet, I don't write separate poems and submit them to magazines individually. Instead, I write each poem, knowing that it's going to be part of a collection. Hence, before I start writing the poems, I already have the outline, the backbone of my poetic story thought out. Then, I start writing the poems, adding to the collection, bringing out the larger themes to life. For instance, with Umbilical Cord, before writing a single poem, I wrote an outline, what the collection is going to be about, and then I started writing the poems. I was thinking about the collection when my amazing sister-in-law who was our surrogate, became pregnant with Malek. That whole experience inspired me and I knew what my second collection of poetry was going to be about. I wrote a few poems before Malek was born and most of the poems were written when I took a year off of parental leave. I would write poems whenever Malek was sleeping. The parenthood journey really inspired me to write and brought the words out of me. The poems are about my love story with Tarn, our surrogacy journey, and our parenthood life raising our Malek.
As a poet, novelist, and children’s author where do you find your inspiration?
God in Pink and War/Torn were both inspired by my queer Muslim Iraqi identity and I was inspired by those who paved the way before. I was inspired by the stories of the marginalized voices, queer biopoc folks. Malek inspired me to write children's books. I read a picture book to him every night so that experience really inspires me to continue writing children's books. I'm surrounded by amazing authors, my family, and my friends who continue to inspire me every day.
How has writing and reading been helpful for you, specifically in this past year?
Writing and reading help bring balance and comfort to my life. If I'm feeling down, I'll read a book or write a poem or a story. If I'm deeply affected by something that happened, I will write about my feelings or I will read a book. Reading and writing are therapeutic, they elevate me and heal my soul. For that, I'm forever grateful to be where I am today.
Hasan Namir is an Iraqi-Canadian author. He graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in English and received the Ying Chen Creative Writing Student Award. He is the author of God in Pink (2015), which won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction and was chosen as one of the Top 100 Books of 2015 by The Globe and Mail. His work has also been in media across Canada. He is also the author of poetry book War/Torn (2019, Book*hug Press) which received the 2020 Barbara Gittings Honor Book Award from the Stonewall Book Awards, and children's book The Name I Call Myself (2020). Hasan lives in Vancouver with his husband and child.
To pre-order Hasan’s book click HERE
Instagram: @hasan.namir
Twitter: @HNamir
