Join Cicely Belle Blain, JD Derbyshire and Michael V Smith as they read from their recent titles, each of which transmutes queer memory into startling and poignant new word-worlds.
Hybrid events are held in person, you will also be able to watch it live streamed from our Youtube channel.
Location: Room C225, UBC Robson Square
Sponsored by The Writers Union of Canada
Type: 2SLGBTQIA+ Programing
Moderator: C.E. Gatchalian
Readers: Cicely Belle Blain, Burning Sugar (Arsenal Pulp Press) | JD Derbyshire, Mercy Gene: The Man-Made Making of a Mad Woman (Goose Lane Editions) | Michael V. Smith, Queers Like Me (Book*hug Press)
About The Moderator
Born and raised on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-Waututh peoples (“Vancouver”), currently dividing his time between “Vancouver” and Tkaronto (“Toronto”), C.E. Gatchalian is a Filipinx queer neurodivergent author, editor and playwright. The author of six books and co-editor of two anthologies, he was the 2013 recipient of the Dayne Ogilvie Prize and a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist. His memoir, Double Melancholy: Art, Beauty and the Making of a Brown Queer Man, was published in 2019 by Arsenal Pulp Press. He is a recipient of the one-time only British Columbia Lieutenant Governor's Arts & Music Awards for his contributions to the arts in BC.
About The Readers
Cicely Belle Blain is a Black, mixed heritage, non-binary, queer activist, writer and CEO from London, UK, now based in Vancouver. They co-founded Black Lives Matter Vancouver and now run an international anti-racism consulting company, Bakau Consulting. They are the Editorial Director of Ripple of Change Magazine and the author of the bestselling poetry book Burning Sugar (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). Burning Sugar was shortlisted for the 2021 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. In 2023, Cicely Belle was selected as a juror for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Cicely Belle’s writing also appears in Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), Coloniality and Racial (In)Justice in the University (U of T Press, 2021), AfriCANthology: Perspectives of Black Canadian Poets (Renaissance Press, 2021) and many more online and print publications. Along with their team, Cicely Belle authored and edited an e-book entitled What We’ve Learned: A Year Fighting White Supremacy in a Pandemic in 2021.
Michael V. Smith lives on the unceded Syilx territory of the Okanagan people, where he teaches creative writing at UBC Okanagan campus. As well as a full prof, filmmaker, and performer, he is the author of seven books, which includes Queers Like Me, his new poetry with Book*hug Press, released this fall 2023.
JD Derbyshire (they/them) is a Vancouver-based comedian, theatre maker, writer, and mad activist whose work examines mental health, neurodiversity, queerness, and gender exploration. Derbyshire has toured Canada as a stand-up comedian, has written over twenty plays that have been produced by companies in Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver, and cohosts a mental health podcast called Mad Practice. Their play Certified, which served as partial inspiration for Mercy Gene, turns the audience into a mental health review board to determine Derbyshire’s sanity by the end of the show. Certified won two Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards in Vancouver and was described by the Georgia Straight as “a testament toa dynamic performance and delicate storytelling.” Mercy Gene is Derbyshire’s first novel.
