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21st annual Word Vancouver takes over the Library this Sunday

Word Vancouver crowd at the Vancouver Public Library

Vancouver Word Festival at Library Square is returning this Sunday from 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.  It’s free, fun and literally literary. Here is a day of picks to help with navigation. 

INSIDE THE LIBRARY

Alma VanDusen room (downstairs)

11:20 Vancouver journalist and photographer Joshua Hergesheimer reads from his novel, The Flour Peddler: A Global Journey into Local Food from Canada to South Sudan. It's a non-fiction story about taking a microcapitalism venture in bicycle-powered grain milling from B.C. to a South Sudan rural women’s cooperative. 

 11:40 Capilano University philosophy teacher Stan Persky reads from his book Post-Communist Stories: About Cities, Politics, Desires, a collection of essays about Eastern Europe after the Second World War.

12:30 In 1974, thirty-two women were hired as mounted police by the RCMP. In Silenced: The Untold Story of the Fight for Equality in the RCMP, Bonnie Reilly Schmidt, formerly a surveillance specialist for the RCMP, draws on first hand accounts about these women navigating through a traditionally male institution.

Peter Kaye Room, downstairs

4:40 Graphic novel writer, Michael Kluckner reads from his story Toshiko, a story of two Japanese Canadian teenagers marooned in the B.C. interior in 1944.

OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY

Family Stage (in Robson Street tent)

11:20  Sharon Shorty, the VPL Storyteller in Residence, was raised with story and weaves inspiring traditional tales from her Tlingit, Northern Tutchone, and Norwegian ancestry.

Kids Words (Homer Street tent)

At 12:10 and 1:20 respectively: Julie Flett tells the story of two boys who love flying dragonfly kites – told both in English and Cree; and Robin Stevenson, who reads from The Summer We Saved the Bees, about a mother obsessed with saving bees.

Poetry on the Bus (Homer Street bus)

1:30 Leah Horlick of For Your Own Good fame performs her poems that break silence and serve as a canon of lesbian and feminist poetry.

Magazine Words (Homer Street tent)

2:10 A stellar group of local writers including Fred Wah, Fiona Tinwei Lam, and Leanne Dunic talk about writing from life experience and how Ricepaper Magazine impacted their careers. Celebrating its 20 year anniversary, Ricepaper Magazine is where many of Canada’s most respected Asian writers were and are first published.

Authors Words (Homer Street tent)

2:40 Stella Harvey reads from The Brink of Freedom about a young boy who disappears from a refugee camp in Athens.

Poetry on the Bus (Homer Street bus)

3:15 Chelene Knight's Braided Skin is filled with rhythmic and powerful poems about urban childhood poverty, mixed ethnic identity, and dreams.

Canada Writes (Homer Street tent)

4:30  Kelowna author Michael V. Smith reads from his book, My Body is Yours, which explores queer sex, gender identity and growing up in a small town.

For more information on the festival, please check out wordvancouver.ca.  There is lots more to see and hear.

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