Join four dynamic queer poets for short readings and a discussion about the craft of writing poetry.
Location: Poetry Tent
Type: Poetry, Panel, Guest LGBTQIA2S+ Curator Jen Currin Programming
Moderator: Guest LGBTQIA2S+ Curator Jen Currin
Readers: kitchen mckeown, i need not be good (Rahila’s Ghost Press) | David Ly, Dream of Me as Water (Palimpsest Press) | Jane Shi, echolalia echolalia (Brick Books) | Kayla Czaga, Midway (House of Anansi Press)
About The Moderator
Jen Currin
Jen Currin's new collection of stories is Disembark, just published by House of Anansi. Their collection Hider/Seeker: Stories won a Canadian Independent Book Award, was a finalist for a ReLit Award, and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book. They have also published five collections of poetry, most recently Trinity Street (Anansi, 2023); The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010), which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for a LAMBDA, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and a ReLit Award; and School (Coach House, 2014), which was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and a ReLit Award. A white settler of mixed, mostly Western European ancestry, Currin lives on the unceded ancestral territories of the Halkomelem-speaking peoples, including the Qayqayt, Musqueam, Kwikwetlem, and Kwantlen Nations, in New Westminster, BC and teaches creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University
About The Readers
kitchen mckeown
kitchen's debut chapbook i need not be good was published in February 2022 by Rahila's Ghost Press and shortlisted for the 2023 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Their poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Room, Peach Mag, Poetry is Dead, The Ex-Puritan, and Bad Nudes. They were awarded the George McWhirter Prize for Poetry in Winter 2020.
David Ly
David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (2020) and Dream of Me as Water (2022), both published under the Anstruther Books imprint of Palimpsest Press, and short-listed for the 2021 and 2023 ReLit Poetry Awards, respectively. He is also co-editor (with Daniel Zomparelli) of Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). David’s poems have appeared in publications such as Pan MacMillan’s HE, SHE, THEY, US: Queer Poems anthology (2024), Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, PRISM International, and The Ex-Puritan, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. David is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine.
Jane Shi
Jane Shi lives on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her writing has appeared in the Disability Visibility Blog, The Offing, and Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press), among others. She is the author of the chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022) and the winner of The Capilano Review’s 2022 In(ter)ventions in the Archive Contest. Her debut poetry collection echolalia echolalia is out October 1st, 2024 with Brick Books. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.
Kayla Czaga
Kayla Czaga is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Midway (House of Anansi, 2024). Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Frequently anthologized in the Best Canadian Poetry in English series, her writing also appears in The Walrus, Grain, Event, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people, the Songhees nd Esquimalt nations.
