Candie Tanaka and Andrew Battershill are both novelists and co-workers at the Vancouver Public Library. They’ll be in conversation about their books and how their love of reading and writing led them both to work in public libraries and how community sharing and learning informs their creative practices. Andrew and Candie will share some of the exciting Arts and Culture and Creative Writing programming being offered at VPL, and tell attendees about all the resources the library ahs to offer for writers and readers alike.
In their City of Vancouver Book Award shortlisted novel, Baby Drag Queen, Candie Tanaka tells the story of Ichiro, a transgender youth in his final year of high school. Ichiro has a job as a dishwasher to earn money to help support his single mother. But it's not enough. Ichiro dreams of buying a camper van for the two of them so they can escape and live off the grid and not have to worry about money anymore. A budding drag queen, he takes a second job performing drag at a local club and learns of an upcoming contest where the prize money would be enough to pay for a camper van. But nobody knows he does drag.
In his new novel Pet, Pet, Slap author Andrew Battershill returns to the strange and surreal world of Pillow, a past-his prime boxer with a penchant for the absurd. This time around Pillow is trying to clean up his act– to mixed results, and what follows is part underdog sports story, part work of Neozoological Surrealism, and part existential mystery novel.
Location: Room C440
Type: In Conversation
Presented by: Word Vancouver · Vancouver Public Library
Readers: Candie Tanaka | Andrew Battershill
About The Readers
Candie Tanaka
Candie Tanaka is a trans writer challenging the binaries continually reconstructed between self and other in literary fiction. Their work explores archive and memory in a futuristic context. They are a creative writing graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University, recently completed a MLIS (Master of Library and Information Studies) at the University of Alberta, earned a Certificate of Distinction from BCIT’s New Media Design and Web Development Program and have a BFA in Intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. In 2017, they were awarded a fully funded literary residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity that helped them further push the boundaries of their writing practice.
Candie lives in Vancouver, BC and is in the final revision stages of a first novel, working on a second manuscript, as well as penning a suite of poems about working on the waterfront. They have published work with Anvil Press, Guernica Editions and Orca Book Publishers. Their latest novel (YA) is called “Baby Drag Queen” and was released on April 11, 2023 and is shortlisted for the 2023 City of Vancouver Book Award.
Andrew Battershill
Andrew Battershill is the husband of the writer Suzannah Showler and the father of Djuna. He is the author of two previous novels. His work has been longlisted for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and he was the winner of the 2019 ReLit Award in the Novel category. He works as public librarian on the unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
The Coach House website page for my book is HERE
