March 19, 2023

Join us for the Book Launch with Kevin Chong and Lindsay Wong Guest Reading from Christine Lai



Presented by Word Vancouver and Asian Canadian Writers Workshop (ACWW)

Come celebrate the joint book launches of Kevin Chong, The Double Life of Benson Yu, (Simon and Schuster), and Lindsay Wong, Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality (Penguin Random House). Enjoy readings and talks from both authors, as well as from featured guest author Christine Lai, Landscapes (Penguin Random House).

Books will be available for purchase and signing through the Chinatown Storytelling Centre’s Foo Hung Curios bookstore. Explore the CSC’s permanent exhibition as you mingle, and take a peek at local wares in Foo Hung Curios!   Food and beverage are available on-site.   

Registration 

 

March 10, 2023

All We Want Is More: The Tobias Wong Project Catalogue Launch


An in-person catalogue launch of "All We Want is More: The Tobias Wong Project" is happening at the Museum of Vancouver.  Visiting guest and speaker Aric Chen, from the National Museum and Institute for Architecture, Design, and Digital Culture in Rotterdam will be in special attendance in Vancouver for this event. Aric was one of Tobias Wong’s friends and collaborators. He will be speaking about his work and collaborations with the artist – as well as his own perspectives on design trends and its future.

Two Vancouver-based collaborators of Tobias Wong’s - Pablo Griff and Nancy Bendtsen – will also be in attendance to share their memories and work with Wong.

Exhibition Curator, Viviane Gosselin will moderate the event and the q&a with the audience.

Tickets to the event includes admission to the exhibition and the MOV galleries prior to the panel.

Date: Thursday, March 30, 2023

Time: 6:30pm - 8:00pm 

Tickets: $5 - $15, Sliding Scale (A service fee, processing fee and GST is also applied to ticket sales)

The exhibition catalogue is available at a special price with purchase of a ticket to the launch. Select it as an "add-on" when purchasing your ticket. Those who opt in may pick up their catalogues when checking in for the event.

Spaces are limited! Register early.  

Poetry and Place: A writing workshop with Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam

On Saturday, April 1, 2-4, 2023 Fiona Tinwei Lam will be facilitating a Poetry & Place writing workshop at the Museum of Vancouver! Please feel free to spread the word to anyone who might be interested.

Registration link here:
https://museumofvancouver.ca/events-programs


 

Around the Table: Literary Readings Celebrating Asian Voices


Join host and Room's lead editor Michelle Ha celebrating Around the Table with art and performances from the issue. Browse visiting cover artist Paige Jung's work and listen to Stephanie Lim, Grace Liu, Many Ruthnum, and Jaeyun Yoo read fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

"The name “Around the Table” came from the realization that for a lot of Asian cultures many moments, activities, and memories are done and made around the table. In this sense, I wanted this issue to feel similar to that. The dream for 46.1 has always been about supporting and uplifting the voices of Asian writers and artists, as well as curating this issue as a platform to showcase the vastness that is the Asian collective... “Around the Table” became home to these incredibly wonderful, joyful, and vulnerable pieces that share individual experiences for the collective." —Michelle Ha

This event will take place on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. We are thankful to be living, creating, and gathering on this land.  Please note that the Zoom event will be recorded.

Readers

Being of both Filipino and Chinese diasporas, Stephanie Lim is a lifelong learner of colonialism and migration, and how these forces shape our relationships with food, each other, and our own identities. A frequent collaborator and speaker on food justice and food sovereignty projects, she lives in Vancouver, BC.

Grace Liu is a student at the University of British Columbia, where she studies English Literature and spends a lot of her time thinking about languages, metaphors, and culture. Her work can also be found in The Garden Statuary and littledeathlit.

Mandy Ruthnum is a Mauritian-Canadian writer from Vancouver Island. She works as a physician specializing in seniors care, and is a single mother to two sons. She writes both fiction and non fiction and her work has been published in The Fabulist, Persephone's Daughters and The Globe and Mail.

Jaeyun Yoo is a Korean-Canadian poet and psychiatrist living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, also known as Vancouver. A Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in Room, Canthius, The /tƐmz/ Review, Prairie Fire, Grain, CV2, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. She is a member of Harbour Centre 5, a local collective of emerging poets.


Around the Table: Literary Readings Celebrating Asian Voices on March 23, 2023 - Registration

February 3, 2023

Happy Birthday to Jim Wong-Chu on January 28




By Perrin Grauer

Posted on January 28, 2021 | Updated January 28, 2021, 3:04pm

The 'Google Doodle' appeared in honour of the renowned artist's birthday.

The life and work of legendary poet, author, historian, photographer, community organizer and activist Jim Wong-Chu were honoured on Google’s homepage Thursday in recognition of what would have been his 72nd birthday.

Jim, who was born in Hong Kong and moved to Vancouver at age 4, was known for his lifelong commitment to “amplifying the narratives of the Asian Canadian community,” says Ricepaper Magazine, a publication he helped establish. After its founding in the 1990s, he also acted as Ricepaper’s very first editor. As part of that same organizational push, Jim also co-founded the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop.

Both Ricepaper and the ACWW are emblematic of Jim’s tireless efforts to spotlight Asian Canadian literature — a genre upon which he left an indelible mark.

Jim studied at Emily Carr (then known as the Vancouver School of Art) between 1975 and 1981. During that time, he co-founded the CFRO-FM radio program Pender Guy Radio, which explored culture and assimilation.

Many years later, in 2014, a series of photographs Jim took during those student years would be exhibited at Centre A. The show included “various community photos and protest images from the drive to save BBQ Pork, the democratization of Chinese Benevolent Associations, and the Quebec-Columbia Connector Freeway protests,” according to Galleries West.

“Witness to and participant in much of the Chinese Canadian activism in the 1970s and early ‘80s, Jim became one of its documenters.”

In 1986, while studying creative writing at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Jim’s groundbreaking book of poetry, Chinatown Ghosts, was published. It represented one of the first poetry collections by a Chinese Canadian writer to be published in the country.

But Jim “didn’t just want to tell his story; he wanted to tell the stories of all the undiscovered talent in his community,” notes Ricepaper.

“In 1989, he began to sift through every literary magazine in the UBC library to identify pieces written by Asian Canadian writers.”


“With the sheer girth of his activity, Jim has been instrumental in creating a cultural scene inclusive of Asian Canadian talent.”

This effort led to the publication of the first of several anthologies of Asian Canadian literature, Many-Mouthed Birds: Contemporary Writing by Chinese Canadians, in 1991. The work, produced with co-editor Bennett Lee, is a “touchstone” in the genre, Ricepaper says.

Jim co-founded the Asian Canadian Performing Arts Resource, literASIAN: A Festival of Pacific Rim Asian Canadian Writing and the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Festival.

“With the sheer girth of his activity Jim has been instrumental in creating a cultural scene inclusive of Asian Canadian talent,” Galleries West wrote in 2014.


Jim passed away in 2017.

Two years later, the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society, in partnership with ECU’s Faculty of Community + Culture, celebrated his life with Jim Wong-Chu: Iconic | Asian | Canadian. The show was held at UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, which houses both the Jim Wong-Chu fonds and books from Jim’s personal library collection. Curated and programmed by curator, Critical and Cultural Practices alumna and ECU staff member Jennifer Dickieson, the archival exhibition included a reading and listening session with local poets, writers, and community leaders at Emily Carr, notes Cissie Fu, Dean of Community + Culture at ECU.

You can find out more about Jim Wong-Chu and his Google Doodle online, now.