4 Poets and a Debut Novelist Walk Into a Bookstore

Join Laura Matwichuk, Sarah de Leeuw, Cass Blanchard, Victoria Hetherington, and Patricia Young April 24th for the launch of their new books – Hosted by Amber Dawn!

April 24th//7 pm
Free Entry

Sponsored in part by Read Local BC, Nightwood Editions, NON Publishing and Massy Books.

About the books:

Laura Matwichuk’s Near Miss:
Near Miss considers the relationship between close calls and the tenuous conditions of contemporary life. From actual cataclysms such as meteor collisions and volcanic eruptions to everyday failures and accidents, these inventive poems collide with the perpetual unease created by life’s unpredictability while contemplating mortality, fragility, gratitude and hopefulness.

Sarah de Leeuw’s Outside, America
Criss-crossing the Canadian/American border and making efforts to grasp a confused global state, Outside, America digs through grief, loss, aging, technological frustrations, environmental degradation and nationalism. This is poetry unfolding across a variety of scales, from global spheres to the most intimate of domestic spaces: tethered to everything from climate change and scientific discovery, from the death of parents to resource extraction, divorce and career changes, these poems touch down on whale extinctions and lounges in international airports, on debris slides and suiciding pilots, on sinkholes, astronauts, grocery-store magazines, earthquakes and even sinking ferries and pop stars.

Cass Blanchard’s Fresh Pack of Smokes:
Dissecting herself and the life she once knew living a transient life that included time spent in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside as a bonafide drug addict, Blanchard writes plainly about violence, drug use and sex work in Fresh Pack of Smokes, offering insight into an often overlooked or misunderstood world.

Victoria Hetherington’s Mooncalves:
Mooncalves follows the bloody implosion of a cult in Sainte-Pétronille, Quebec, understood through the urgent voices of the living and a ring of ghostly, shape-shifting watchers. Sensing the impending dissolution of society by technological progress, the charismatic, utterly unhinged Joseph Reiser forms “Walden”, a collective of Luddite devotees—most still in their teens. A vicious act of sexual violence shatters the collective, and devotee Erica Strickland barely escapes with her life. Through its tale of buried crime in rural Quebec and the mechanism of cult leadership, Mooncalves explores the unshakable hold of first love, the warped influence of unchecked ambition and sexual obsession, and the uncomfortable gaze of the accumulating dead.

Patricia Young’s Amateurs at Love:
Patricia Young’s new collection confirms her status as one of Canada’s great and most versatile contemporary poets. In Amateurs at Love, she explores the dynamic, liminal space between lovers, taking precise aim at the silent climacteric moments of the heart: the interrogating, persuading, confiding, reflecting moments that help us feel and understand that distance.

This event is taking place on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-Waututh Nations.

Massy Books’ downstairs event space is accessible! You can view the floorplan here: http://www.massybooks.com/accessibility/
Please feel free to reach out with any inquiries.