In this panel, writers Nicola Harwood, Tara Sidhoo Fraser, and Sarah Leavitt will read short excerpts from their work and discuss their processes in creating works of memoir that deal with queer lives.
Location: Room C400
Type: Guest LGBTQIA2S+ Curator Jen Currin Programming
Moderator: LGBTQIA2S+ Curator Jen Currin
Readers: Sarah Leavitt, Something, Not Nothing (Arsenal Pulp Press) | Nicola Harwood, Flight Instructions for the Commitment Impaired: A Memoir About Family, Trauma, and Good Times (Dagger Editions) | Tara Sidhoo Fraser, When My Ghost Sings: A Memoir of Stroke, Recovery, and Transformation (Arsenal Pulp 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
Sarah Leavitt
Sarah Leavitt is a cartoonist and educator living in Vancouver, BC. She is the author of the graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (2010). A feature-length animation based on Tangles is in production. She is also the author of the award-winning historical fiction comic Agnes, Murderess (2019). Her newest book is Something, Not Nothing (September 2024). It’s a collection of short experimental comics about grief and loss that Sarah made during the first two years after her partner, Donimo, died. Sarah is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate comics classes since 2012.
Nicola Harwood
Nicola Harwood is a queer writer and interdisciplinary artist. Her projects have been produced in Canada, Europe and the US. Nicola often works in collaboration with other artists and she has facilitated many art, writing and theatre projects with youth and community. Recent projects include Summoning, No Words, an interactive sound installation built out of the female voice and High Muck-a-Muck: Playing Chinese (2014) an artist / programmer collaboration which won the 2015 UK New Media Writing Prize. Her memoir about queer family, Flight Instructions for the Commitment Impaired, was published by Caitlin Press in 2016. She is grateful to live and love on the ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations also known as Vancouver, Canada. Nicola teaches Creative Writing, Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts and in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. www.nicolaharwood.com
Tara Sidhoo Fraser
Tara Sidhoo Fraser is a queer writer and creator of South Asian and Scottish ancestry. She graduated from the University of Victoria with a BA in Anthropology, and her work has been published with Autostraddle and Anathema magazine, among others. When My Ghost Sings is her first book. She lives in Vancouver.
