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Title: Reading by Novelist Gurjinder Basran in Special Collections, March 14, 2013
Description: North Delta fiction writer Gurjinder Basran is a graduate of SFU’s Writer’s Studio. Her debut novel, Everything Was Good-Bye (2010), which has been described as a ‘Canadian Romeo and Juliet’, was published to excellent reviews; it was awarded the B.C. Book Awards’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2011, having first won the Mother Tongue Press’s Search
Show moreNorth Delta fiction writer Gurjinder Basran is a graduate of SFU’s Writer’s Studio. Her debut novel, Everything Was Good-Bye (2010), which has been described as a ‘Canadian Romeo and Juliet’, was published to excellent reviews; it was awarded the B.C. Book Awards’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2011, having first won the Mother Tongue Press’s Search for the Next Great B.C. Novel Contest.
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Date: 2013-03-14

Title: Poetry Reading on November 25 - Ken Babstock
Description: Newfoundland-born, Toronto-based poet Ken Babstock is the author of On Malice, recently published by Coach House Press, plus four previous collections of poetry, all of which have received critical acclaim and been awarded major literary prizes, including the Trillium and Griffin. His work has been widely anthologized in Canada, Britain and the U.S
Show moreNewfoundland-born, Toronto-based poet Ken Babstock is the author of On Malice, recently published by Coach House Press, plus four previous collections of poetry, all of which have received critical acclaim and been awarded major literary prizes, including the Trillium and Griffin. His work has been widely anthologized in Canada, Britain and the U.S. and translated into Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, and French. He is presently visiting writer-in-residence in the University of British Columbia Creative Writing Program.
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Date: 2014-11-25

Title: The Lake District Online Project and the Digital Humanities Part 2
Description: The Lake District Online project, based on a collection of rare books held in SFU Special Collections, aims to create the first full-text electronic archive of Lake District travel writing dating from the early 18th c. Professor Linley will talk about the process of mobilizing new digital humanities methods and tools to study book history and to
Show moreThe Lake District Online project, based on a collection of rare books held in SFU Special Collections, aims to create the first full-text electronic archive of Lake District travel writing dating from the early 18th c. Professor Linley will talk about the process of mobilizing new digital humanities methods and tools to study book history and to ask what it means to explore the book ecologically. A key question to be addressed is: what is at stake when the Victorian memorializing view of natural, common space, inherited from Wordsworth and more than a century of domestic travel writing, itself begins to travel – not only between geographic locations but between print and digital media? Initial research and digitization stages have revealed some unique challenges and questions, perhaps the most central being: what is the nature of this object called a book and what is it to become after it migrates to a digital environment?
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Date: 2014-11-20

Title: Reading by Poets Mariner Janes and Dennis E.Bolen in SFU Special Collections, Novermber 7, 2013
Description: Mariner Janes was born in Victoria, BC and raised in East Vancouver. His books include The Monument Cycles (Talonbooks 2013), and blueprint,a chapbook. He has also been published in West Coast Line. While studying at SFU, he co-edited iamb magazine, a venue for new and emerging writers. Mariner works in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and aims to
Show moreMariner Janes was born in Victoria, BC and raised in East Vancouver. His books include The Monument Cycles (Talonbooks 2013), and blueprint,a chapbook. He has also been published in West Coast Line. While studying at SFU, he co-edited iamb magazine, a venue for new and emerging writers. Mariner works in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and aims to bring the multitude of beautiful voices he finds there into his work, through found poetry, transcription, and storytelling. He is currently at work on a second collection of poetry and short stories.
Dennis E. Bolen is a Vancouver-based novelist, editor, teacher and journalist. With the recent publication of Black Liquor (Caitlin Press, 2013) he adds ‘poet’ to his literary resume (see http://dennisbolen.com). Dennis was educated at the University of Victoria and UBC (MFA); in 1989 he helped establish the international literary journal subTerrain and served there as fiction editor for ten years. His most recent book of fiction, Anticipated
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Date: 2013-11-07

Title: Reading by poet and scholar Ammiel Alcalay in Special Collections
Description: Poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar, Ammiel Alcalay is deputy chair of the PhD Program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and former chair of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures at Queens College. His books include a little history (2013), from the warring factions, (2002), neither wit nor gold 2011), Islanders
Show morePoet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar, Ammiel Alcalay is deputy chair of the PhD Program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and former chair of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures at Queens College. His books include a little history (2013), from the warring factions, (2002), neither wit nor gold 2011), Islanders (2010), Scrapmetal (2007), Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999 (1999), and After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture (1993). In 2012, The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Department of Arabic & Islamic Studies at Georgetown University convened a symposium arking 20 years since the publication of After Jews and Arabs. < During the war in former Yugoslavia, he was one of the only translators working from Bosnian, and published widely, including Sarajevo: A War Journal by Zlatko Dizdarević and The Tenth Circle of Hell by camp survivor Rezak Hukanović. Other translations include Sarajevo Blues (1998) and Nine Alexandrias (2003) by Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinović, Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing (1996), the co-translation (with Oz Shelach) of Outcast by Shimon Ballas (2007), and Projimos/Intimates by Neruda Prize recipient José Kozer (Carrer-Ausias, 1990). He has also published translations from Latin, Arabic, Italian, and French. With Megan Paslawski, he co-edited Michael Rumaker’s Robert Duncan in San Francisco (City Lights, 2013).< He is founder and general editor, under the auspices of the Center for the Humanities and the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative http://lostandfoundbooks.org), along with its offshoot Lost & Found Elsewhere, and has edited texts by Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Diane di Prima, Joanne Kyger, and Michael Rumaker for these projects.
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Date: 2016-01-15

Title: Poetry Readings on October 9: Phinder Dulai and Renee Saklikar
Description: Phinder Dulai is the Surrey-based author of dream/arteries (Talonbooks, Fall 2014) and two previous books of poetry: Ragas from the Periphery (Arsenal Pulp, 1995) and Basmati Brown (Nightwood, 2000). His most recent work has been published in Canadian Literature and Cue Books Anthology; earlier work has appeared in numerous other Canadian magazines
Show morePhinder Dulai is the Surrey-based author of dream/arteries (Talonbooks, Fall 2014) and two previous books of poetry: Ragas from the Periphery (Arsenal Pulp, 1995) and Basmati Brown (Nightwood, 2000). His most recent work has been published in Canadian Literature and Cue Books Anthology; earlier work has appeared in numerous other Canadian magazines. Dulai is a cofounder of the Surrey-based interdisciplinary contemporary arts group The South of Fraser Inter Arts Collective (SOFIA/c).

Renée Sarojini Saklikar writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle that includes poetry, fiction, and essays. Published work appears in journals, anthologies, and newspapers, including, ti-TCR / a web folio (The Capilano Review), Literary Review of Canada, The Vancouver Review, Geist, Arc Poetry Magazine and many more. The first completed book from thecanadaproject is Children of air india, un/ authorized exhibits and interjections (Nightwood Editions, 2013), winner of the 2014 Canadian Authors Literary Award for poetry and a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award. A mentor and instructor for Simon Fraser University’s writing and publishing program, Renée is the cofounder of a new poetry reading series, Lunch Poems at SFU.
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Date: 2014-09-09

Title: Reading by poets Lissa Wolsak and Stephen Collis in Special Collections, Wednesday March 27, 2013
Description: Lissa Wolsak, poet and essayist, works as an energy-field therapist and goldsmith in Vancouver. A major collection of her work, Squeezed Light: Collected Works 1994–2005, was published by Station Hill Press in 2010 to many outstanding reviews. A second volume is in the works; in addition,poetry and books are orthcoming from Yellow Edenwald Field,
Show moreLissa Wolsak, poet and essayist, works as an energy-field therapist and goldsmith in Vancouver. A major collection of her work, Squeezed Light: Collected Works 1994–2005, was published by Station Hill Press in 2010 to many outstanding reviews. A second volume is in the works; in addition,poetry and books are orthcoming from Yellow Edenwald Field, Xeroxial Editions, Tinfish Press, Airfoil, and Above/Ground Press. Recently a special issue of the SFU journal Poetic Front was devoted to scholars and poets responding to her work. “Squeezed Light... is a major event.” - Hank Lazer Stephen

Stephen Collis is an award-winning poet, activist, and professor of contemporary literature in SFU’s English Dept. His poetry books include Anarchive (2005), The Commons (2008), On the Material (2010, awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), and the forthcoming To the Barricades. He has also written two books of criticism, including Phyllis Webb and the Common Good (2007). His collection of essays on the Occupy movement, Dispatches from the Occupation (2012), comes out of his activist experiences and is a philosophical meditation on activist tactics, social movements, and change. A Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow in 2011/12, Collis has read and lectured across Canada, the United States, and Europe. He has three books forthcoming this year, including a first work of fiction.
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Date: 2013-03-27

Title: Occupy Vancouver: A Discussion in Special Collections, September 24, 2013
Date: 2013-09-24

Title: Readings by Writers, Rita Wong and Christine LeClerc
Description: Rita Wong grew up in Calgary and currently lives in Vancouver. She has a doctorate from SFU and is the author of three books of poetry, Monkeypuzzle (1998), Forage (2007, winner of the Dorothy Livesay Prize), and Undercurrent (2015), as well as Sybil Unrest (2008; rev. ed. 2013), co-written with her frequent collaborator Larissa Lai. Christine
Show moreRita Wong grew up in Calgary and currently lives in Vancouver. She has a doctorate from SFU and is the author of three books of poetry, Monkeypuzzle (1998), Forage (2007, winner of the Dorothy Livesay Prize), and Undercurrent (2015), as well as Sybil Unrest (2008; rev. ed. 2013), co-written with her frequent collaborator Larissa Lai.

Christine LeClerc is a Vancouver-based writer and anti-pipeline/ tar sands activist. A graduate of the UBC Creative Writing program, she has published two books of poetry, Counterfeit (2008) and Oilywood (2013), and is an editor of The Enpipe Line: 70,000+ Km of Poetry Written in Resistance to the Northern Gateway Pipeline Proposal (Creekstone Press, 2012). Her work often investigates the relationships between social justice, ecology, decolonization, and contemporary poetics. She is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
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Date: 2015-09-22

Title: Reading by poet and film-maker Colin Browne in SFU Special Collections, Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Description: A co-founder of the Kootenay School of Writing and of SFU’s Praxis Centre for Screenwriters, Colin Browne is the author of a number of critically acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Ground Water (2002), which was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award and a Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize; The Shovel (2007), shortlisted for the
Show moreA co-founder of the Kootenay School of Writing and of SFU’s Praxis Centre for Screenwriters, Colin Browne is the author of a number of critically acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Ground Water (2002), which was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award and a Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize; The Shovel (2007), shortlisted for the 2008 ReLit Award; and The Properties (Talonbooks, 2012).
Browne’s films include Linton Garner: I Never Said Goodbye (2003), Father and Son (1992) and White Lake (1989), which was nominated for a Genie for Best Feature Length Documentary. He is currently working on texts for new operas. His recent work explores the history and legacy of the Surrealist fascination with the art of the Northwest Coast and Alaska. Essays include “Scavengers of Paradise” as well as pieces on Esther Shalev-Gertz and Edward S. Curtis. He teaches at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts.
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Date: 2013-02-20

Title: Talk on October 20: Learning from the Wordsworth Trust’s Collections
Description: Dove Cottage, at the heart of the English Lake District National Park, was the home of William Wordsworth during his most creative years. Here he wrote his autobiographical masterpiece‘The Prelude’; it was also here that his sister Dorothy wrote her ‘Grasmere Journals’. The Wordsworth Trust owns the historic site and the world’s greatest collection
Show moreDove Cottage, at the heart of the English Lake District National Park, was the home of William Wordsworth during his most creative years. Here he wrote his autobiographical masterpiece‘The Prelude’; it was also here that his sister Dorothy wrote her ‘Grasmere Journals’. The Wordsworth Trust owns the historic site and the world’s greatest collection of manuscripts by the two writers and others of their family and circle, as well as an internationally important collection of first editions and early Lake District guides and watercolours. This talk will explore the collections, their meanings and the variety of ways in which learning can be gained from them. Jeff Cowton is Curator at Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere at the heart of the English Lake District National Park. The museum and archive holds the greatest single collection of Wordsworth and Lake District materials amongst 67,000 manuscripts, books and fine art.
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Date: 2014-10-20

Title: Pacific Tribune Photograph Collection - A Discussion in Special Collections
Description: For the years 1972 to 1992, Sean Griffin and Dan Keeton photographically documented many of the British Columbia social and labour movements. These photographs appeared regularly in the Pacific Tribune, a weekly newspaper published by the Tribune Publishing Company and widely known in the province as “B.C.’s only labour weekly”. In 1992, the
Show moreFor the years 1972 to 1992, Sean Griffin and Dan Keeton photographically documented many of the British Columbia social and labour movements. These photographs appeared regularly in the Pacific Tribune, a weekly newspaper published by the Tribune Publishing Company and widely known in the province as “B.C.’s only labour weekly”. In 1992, the publishing company became part of the Pacific Socialist Education Association (PSEA) . Now PSEA has donated the entire Collection of photographs, numbering over 20,000 35mm images to Special Collections and Rare Books. Selections from this Collection will soon be posted to the web with the financial assistance of the PSEA and the B.C. History Digitization Program.
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Date: 2014-10-16

Title: Poetry Readings in Special Collections on April 15: Madeleine Thien and Thursdays Writing Collective
Description: Madeleine Thien, at the time of this reading SFU's Ellen & Warren Tallman Writer in Residence was born in Vancouver, and educated at both SFU and UBC. She is one of the most accomplished and internationally renowned young fiction writers in Canada. Her short stories and novels have been published throughout the English speaking world, and
Show moreMadeleine Thien, at the time of this reading SFU's Ellen & Warren Tallman Writer in Residence was born in Vancouver, and educated at both SFU and UBC. She is one of the most accomplished and internationally renowned young fiction writers in Canada. Her short stories and novels have been published throughout the English speaking world, and translated into approximately 18 languages. The Thursdays Writing Collective, founded in 2008, is made up of more than 150 artists, activists, slam poets, and storytellers. Their Postal Code Readings series began to support V6A: Writing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, an anthology that includes some members and whose sales benefit the program.
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Date: 2014-04-15