Come to the Museum of Vancouver to help Word Vancouver celebrate 30 years of bringing authors and their words to the streets of Vancouver and beyond. We have been collaborating with communities to make sure we bring the most dynamic and diverse programming we could and now it is time to take a moment and celebrate this accomplishment. Your ticket helps us to keep the festival free.

Come out and help us. $45, INCLUDES A DRINK TICKET AND BOOK.

All Ages Event. Sponsored by UBC Creative Writing, UBC Library, Pace Accounting, Creative BC, The Metro Vancouver Regional Grant, Nester's Main Street, Whole Foods Cambie Street, Save Way King Edward.

The official opening fundraising event for this year’s Word Vancouver festival will be an evening of readings, music, laughter, and mingling!

The admission cost includes: entry into The Museum of Vancouver before and after the event, one drink, and a book from Word Vancouver. This is a catered event with light snacks.

Host: Tamara Taggart

6:00 - 6:30 Intimate reading and Q&A with UBC Library’s Inaugural Writer-in-Residence

Pre- Show - Ticketed Separately. UBC Library’s Inaugural Writer-in-Residence, Tsering Yangzom Lama, reads from We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies (Penguin Random House).

6:30 - 7:00 Musical Performance

Doors Open for Main Event. Mark James Fortin (guitar) and Lorna Fortin (cello) will play as people come in.

7:00 Words of Welcome & Musical Performances

Main Event Begins. Traditional welcome from Les George of Tsleil-Waututh Nation.Creative BC Manager Mathew Parry and Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam will both say a few words. Mark James Fortin (guitar) and Lorna Fortin (cello) will play.

7:30 Reading and Q&A from Keynote Author

Reading and Q&A from keynote author Valerie Jerome, Races (Goose Lane Editions).

8:00 Readings and Q& A's with our Guest Curator

Introduction with talk and Q&A from our guest our guest Indigenous Curator Michelle Cyca.

8::30 Comedy Set

Comedy act from Sasha Mark

About The Host

Tamara Taggart

Tamara Taggart is a community leader, activist, veteran broadcaster, cancer survivor, and mother. With a broadcasting career spanning 28 years in television, radio, and digital media, Tamara has also focused two decades’ of volunteer efforts on health care and the well-being of children and people with disabilities. She is a community leader who advocates for others and raises much-needed funds for many important causes, contributing thousands of hours and serving as a director of several non-profit organizations. Tamara currently hosts the podcast Telus Talks with Tamara Taggart from her home studio and is the volunteer president of Down syndrome BC.

About The Performers

Les George

Les George is a member of the səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nation, where he lives on the north shore of Burrard Inlet. He is the grandson of the late səlilwətaɬ Chief Dan George and is connected through family to the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations. Les attended the Native Education College in Vancouver. In 2017 he was invited to return, giving a performance and prayer at the opening of their cultural gathering space. In 2023 he was the Indigenous Storyteller in Residence for the Vancouver Public Library. 

For 23 years, Les George was a First Nations Support Worker with the North Vancouver School District, working closely with at-risk youth and those with special needs. He shared stories, drumming, songs, and held restorative justice circles with students. Les also works for Takaya Tours, the premier First Nation owned eco-tourism venture in the Lower Mainland. As a guide, he keeps groups safe as they paddle Burrard Inlet and Indian Arm in replica ocean-going canoes or sea kayaks, all while sharing səlilwətaɬ songs, legends, and information about village sites.

Fiona Tinwei Lam

Vancouver's 6th Poet Laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam has authored three poetry collections and a children’s book. Her poems have been featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2010 and 2020 (including the 2017 anniversary edition), Best Canadian Essays 2024 and thrice with BC’s Poetry in Transit, as well as in several award-winning poetry videos that have screened at festivals internationally. She edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems about Facing Cancer, and co-edited two nonfiction anthologies. Shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Prize and other awards, her work appears in over 45 anthologies. She teaches creative writing at SFU Continuing Studies. fionalam.net

Mark James Fortin and Lorna Fortin

Mark James Fortin and Lorna Fortin are a Vancouver jazz, roots, singer-songwriter duo who deliver infectious live performances that evoke an emotional response in the listener. Before moving to Vancouver, Mark lived in Toronto and played shows with the likes of Greg Keelor, Jim Cuddy, the Brent brothers and Soul Asylum and received recognition for his art with accomplishments such as winning Toronto’s Radio Q107 Homegrown Contest and was offered management and label deals. Mark’s first west-coast musical collaboration was with Yvonne McSkimming, co-writing music for the Fringe Festival Hit Crossing Boundaries. After rave reviews the two went into the studio with Bill Buckingham to arrange and co-produce Yvonne’s debut CD “A Place of Standing” which spent 6 months at the top of the MP3.com charts and across Canada. The artist’s collaboration also resulted in the co-creation of one Vancouver’s most beloved monthly songwriters showcases in the city’s history. The ongoing benefit event Just Singin ‘Round (JSR) hosted by Mark and Yvonne has raised over 2 million dollars for numerous Vancouver charities over the past 26 years. Shortly after Mark moved to Vancouver, Lorna joined him and has been a regular contributor to his shows for over 24 years. Some of their claims to fame as a duo include performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1999. In 2018, Mark, Lorna and their daughter Ella won a Leo Award for best score for a short drama film, and in 2019 Mark co-wrote the hit single “All about Love” with Charley Huntley which was recorded and released by Esan Chan in Hong Kong. This hit stayed at #1 on iTunes for 6 weeks, ahead of Celine Dion. This duo performs at local restaurants, bars, weddings, funerals and house-concerts with a line-up of captivating originals and well-known songs that reveal their uncompromising desire to offer music with heart. For larger venues and parties, ask Mark and Lorna about the band (find Mark James Fortin Band on Facebook).

Tsering Yangzom Lama

Tsering Yangzom Lama’s debut novel, We Measure The Earth With Our Bodies, won the GLCA New Writers Award as well as the Banff Mountain Book Award for Fiction & Poetry. Her novel also received nominations for The Giller Prize, Prix Émile Guimet, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Carol Shields Prize, The Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writers Prize, The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes, The VCU Cabell First Novel Prize, and The Toronto Book Awards. Tsering holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and a BA in Creative Writing and International Relations from the University of British Columbia. WE MEASURE is published in English in Canada, the United States, and India. Translations are available or forthcoming in French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Bulgarian, Tibetan, and Arabic.

Valerie Jerome

Valerie Jerome is an activist, speaker, teacher, politician and athlete from Vancouver. The granddaughter of Canada’s first Black Olympian, John “Army” Howard, Jerome became the Canadian senior women’s champion in the sprints and long jump at the age of 15 in 1959. She went on to represent Canada at the 1960 Rome Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, and the Pan American Games (where she won a bronze medal in the 4 x 100 metres relay), competing alongside her brother Harry Jerome. Away from the track, Jerome has represented the Green Party of British Columbia and is a recipient of the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal and for a City of Vancouver Heritage Award for her work in conservation. She has also served as a board member for numerous organizations — including Achilles Track & Field, the Junior Black Achievement Awards, and several dance companies — and spoken in schools and at community events for Black History Month. Races is her first book.

Michelle Cyca

Michelle Cyca is a journalist and essayist living on the unceded homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in what is recently called Vancouver. She is an editor with The Narwhal and a contributing writer to The Walrus. Her writing can often be found in Maclean's, Chatelaine, The Tyee and The Globe & Mail. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief and co-publisher of SAD Mag. Her feature story, The Curious Case of Gina Adams, received a National Magazine Award in 2023 for investigative journalism, and was published in April 2024 as a limited-edition hardcover. She's a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 6, Saskatchewan.

Sasha Mark

Sasha Mark (he/him/they/them) is a Cree-Métis stand up comedian from Treaty 1 territory, but now is residing on so called “Vancouver”. He has done work with the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, OutTV, Just For Laughs Vancouver and is most known for their work on APTN. He is the host of the Sasha Ha Ha Show and also co hosts Camp! Comedy a comedy and drag cabaret show.