Tagged: Real Vancouver Writers’ Series

This Second Anniversary Edition features some of Canada’s most respected and best known writers sharing the stage with emerging literary talents. It will be livestreamed to the world and archived for posterity via fabulous internet technologies.

We are continuing our trend of including writers from beyond British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, too, as we welcome Fernie’s Angie Abdou, and Toronto’s Ayelet Tsabari to the stage.

EVENT DETAILS: Tuesday January 24th, 7PM-10PM, W2 Media Cafe in Vancouver’s DTES. $5 nobody turned away.

Check the bios on the complete line-up:

ANGIE ABDOU: Angie Abdou is a fiction writer and teacher who has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Calgary.  BC BookWorld called her short story collection, Anything Boys Can Do (2006), an “extraordinary literary debut.”

The Globe and Mail praised her first novel, The Bone Cage (2007), for its “beautiful writing” and The Quill & Quire called it “vivid, intense, and authentic.” It was also a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads 2011 and the 2011-2012 MacEwan Book of the Year.

Angie’s second novel, The Canterbury Trail, a black comedy about mountain culture, was published byBrindle & Glass Press (February 2011).

ZSUZSI GARTNER: Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the best-selling short fiction collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth, the editor of B.C. Book-Prize nominee Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow, and the creative director of Vancouver Review’s Blueprint BC Fiction Series.

Her stories have been widely anthologized, and broadcast on CBC and NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her latest book, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, was shortlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Zsuzsi is a long-time contributing reviewer for The Globe & Mail, and has appeared on CBC’s Canada Reads. She has received numerous nominations and awards for her magazine journalism, and a 2007 National Magazine Award for fiction. Zsuzsi lives in Vancouver.

DAVID LESTER: David Lester is a painter, graphic designer, cartoonist, and the guitarist in the rock duo Mecca Normal.

His new graphic novel, The Listener, was published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

His book, The Gruesome Acts of Capitalism went into a revised second printing. He has created the poster series “Inspired Agitators,” archived at The Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, and designed the popular t-shirt “Actually, I like crap.”

Lester also does a weekly illustration, with text by Mecca Normal bandmate Jean Smith, for Magnet Magazine. His comics appeared in Drippytown #4, Warburger (Slovinia) and Broken Pencil magazine. As well, his cartoons appeared regularly for a year in the San Diego Reader. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.

ARLEY MCNENEY: Arley McNeney is a Vancouver writer with two published novels to her credit. Her most recent book, The Time We All Went Marching, published byFredricton, New Brunswick’s Gooselane Editions.

Michelle Berry had this to say about Arley’s book in the Globe and Mail, “a stunning achievement. It has the feel of a Michael Ondaatje novel, the same breathtaking language and image, a dream-like quality to the scenes.”

Arley describes herself:

“I’m 28 years old and from New Westminster, BC. Last July, I moved back to British Columbia after doing my MFA at the University of Illinois, where I also played varsity wheelchair basketball.

I was on the Canadian wheelchair basketball national team for six years and won two World Championship gold medals and a Paralympic bronze, though I’ve since retired.

I work as a Communications Coordinator for various wheelchair sports organizations.

Currently, I live in Vancouver with my cat, Mika.”

GARRY THOMAS MORSE: Garry Thomas Morse has had two books of poetry published by LINEbooks, Transversals for Orpheus (2006) and Streams (2007), one collection of fiction, Death in Vancouver (2009), published by Talonbooks, and two books of poetry published by Talonbooks, After Jack (2010) and Discovery Passages (2011), finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.

Grounded in the work of Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Desnos, Ezra Pound, Jack Spicer, Rainer Maria Rilke and his Native oral traditions, his work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Branch Magazine, Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, CV2, dANDelion, filling Station, memewar, Poetry is Dead, subTerrain, The Vancouver Review and West Coast Line. Morse is the recipient of the 2008 City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist and has twice been selected as runner-up for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.

Minor Episodes, his second book of fiction, concerning surrealist and speculative genres, is forthcoming from Talonbooks in 2012.

JEN NEALE: Jen Neale is currently an MFA student in the UBC Creative Writing program.

AYELET TSABARI: Ayelet‘s first book, a collection of short fiction set in Israel and titled The Best Place on Earth, is forthcoming with HarperCollins in 2013.

Ayelet was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She grew up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, travelled extensively throughout South East Asia, Europe and North America, and now lives in Toronto. Ayelet was first published at the age of ten in an Israeli children’s magazine and continued to write throughout her teenage years publishing articles, essays, short stories and poems. As a freelance journalist, Ayelet wrote feature articles for Maariv, the second largest newspaper in Israel, and several other Israeli magazines.

In 1998 Ayelet moved to Vancouver, Canada, where she had to adjust to writing in her second language. She looked into other ways to tell stories and studied film and photography in Capilano University’s Media Program. She directed two documentary films, one of which won the grand prize in the Palm Spring International Short Film Festival.

She wrote her first story in English in 2006.

W2 REAL VANCOUVER WRITERS’ SERIES IS 100% VOLUNTEER-DRIVEN.