Book Launch: Pivot Point by Bren Simmers

Join us on February 26th at 7 PM for the launch of Bren Simmers’s Pivot Point, with special guest readers Raoul Fernances, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, and Rob Taylor!

Bren Simmers’s Pivot Point is a lyrical account of a nine-day wilderness canoe trip through the Bowron Lakes Canoe Circuit in British Columbia. At the heart of the expedition are three young women, friends whose lives seem at risk of drifting apart as they approach middle age. While buoyed by the pleasures of adventure and camaraderie, and by a deep reverence for nature, Simmers finds herself struggling to inhabit the trip’s trickier elements—storms, insects, physical fatigue, conflict, doubt, and disorientation—and, as with the challenges and changes in her own life, to embrace them with confidence. Recounted in a journal-entry style with poems interleaving each day’s narrative, Pivot Point is a frank reflection on the roles friendship, mindfulness and creativity play in the evolution of our lives.

Bren Simmers’ first book of non-fiction, Pivot Point (Gaspereau Press, 2019), is a lyrical account of a nine-day wilderness canoe journey and a frank reflection on the roles friendship, mindfulness, and creativity play in the evolution of our lives. She is also the author of two books of poetry, Night Gears (Wolsak & Wynn, 2010) and Hastings-Sunrise (Nightwood Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. A lifelong West Coaster, she now lives on PEI.

Raoul Fernandes lives and writes in Vancouver, BC. His first collection of poems, Transmitter and Receiver (Nightwood Editions, 2015) won the Dorothy Livesay Award and the Debut-litzer Award for Poetry in 2016 and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s first book, Port of Being (Invisible Publishing), received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and was chosen by CBC as one of the best Canadian poetry books of 2018. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The Humber Literary Review and Quill & Quire, respectively. She lives on unceded Coast Salish land (Vancouver) where she began the Intersections Reading Group and where she works as a publishing consultant and editor for various presses across Canada.

Rob Taylor lives in Port Moody, BC with his wife and children. He is the author of Oh Not So Great: Poems from the Depression Project (Leaf Press, 2017), The News (Gaspereau Press, 2016) and The Other Side of Ourselves (Cormorant Books, 2011). In 2017, The News was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Rob is also the editor of What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation (Nightwood Editions, 2018) and the guest editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2019 (Biblioasis, 2019).

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

The downstairs event space at Massy Books (229 E. Georgia St.) is accessible! You can view the floorplan here: http://www.massybooks.com/accessibility/
Please feel free to reach out with any inquiries.

Massy Books is easily accessible by transit! Close to the 22, 3, 8 and 19 bus lines at Main and Georgia/Gore and Georgia. There is metered street parking along Georgia, or lot parking at the Sun Wah Centre around the corner (268 Keefer).