Welcome to Historic Joy Kogawa House

Romance is in the air at Historic Joy Kogawa House. Come celebrate Valentine’s Day with love poems, chocolate and vino, and help launch Leaf Press’s anthology The Wild Weathers with readings from Peter Trower, Daniela Elza, Susan McCaslin, Elsie Neufeld, Berenice Freedome, Jocelyn Pitsch, Meg Torwl, Leanne Dunic, Lenore Rowntree, and Robin Susanto. Kogawa House writer-in-residence, Deborah Willis, will attend.

When: 3 to 5 pm, Sunday, February 12

Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House is located at 1450 West 64th Avenue (2 blocks east of Granville)

Cost: Tickets are $15 at the door and include a glass of the best vino and all the chocolate in the house>

Please rsvp to kogawahouse@yahoo.ca. See you there!

Historic Joy Kogawa House brings writing into the community

Historic Joy Kogawa House proudly announces Victoria author Deborah Willis as our 2012 writer-in-residence.

Deborah Willis was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Her short fiction has appeared in Grain, Event, Prism International, and The Walrus. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2009, and was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in British Columbia and the Governor General’s Award. Willis resides in Victoria, B.C., but will live and work at Historic Joy Kogawa House from January 15 to April 15, 2012.

“I’m so pleased to have the chance to live in the Joy Kogawa House,” says Willis, who will work on her second collection of stories during her residency. The mandate of the house states that writers-in-residence will spend sixty percent of their time writing and forty percent on community outreach. “The personal, private work of writing is balanced by time spent on community programs. It’s a wonderful way for me to experience living in Vancouver.”

Willis will work with three community groups, offering a four-week writing program for teens from local high schools, a reading program for newcomers to Canada in partnership with the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Centre, and co-facilitating writing workshops for sex workers and former sex workers in partnership with Aaron Golbeck of Downtown Eastside Studio Society. She will also run a writing workshop for children, with Sarah Maitland, in the KidSafe Writers’ Room at Queen Alexandra Elementary School.

Willis will take writing into the community in a public program that creates new audiences for Canadian literature and encourages new writers to contribute their stories to our literary canon.

To interview Deborah Willis about her work and about living and working at Historic Joy Kogawa House, to volunteer to assist with these community programs, and for further information, please visit www.kogawahouse.com.

We acknowledge the Canada Council and the B.C. Arts Council for their financial support of this project.

Note to Editors:

1. Information on Historic Joy Kogawa House

Historic Joy Kogawa House is the former home of the Canadian author Joy Kogawa (born 1935). It stands as a cultural and historical reminder of the expropriation of property that all Canadians of Japanese descent experienced after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The Historic Joy Kogawa House writer-in-residence program brings well-regarded professional writers in touch with a local community of writers, readers, editors, publishers, booksellers, and librarians. While in residence, the writer works to enrich the literary community around him or her and to foster an appreciation for Canadian writing through programs that involve students, other established and emerging writers and members of the general public.

Since 2009, as a partner with TLC, the Historic Joy Kogawa Society has hosted four writers to live and work in the house on a paid basis. Funding is provided through the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, and through donations from the general public.

Contact:

Kogawa House Society: Ann-Marie Metten / kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

2. Information about the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society

The TCCS provides settlement services hoping to help newcomers enjoy a smooth transition to Canada and plays an important role in promoting mutual understanding and cultural harmony between Taiwanese and other ethnic groups in Canada.

Contact:

Kogawa House Society: Cecilia Chueh / cecilia@tccs.ca

3. Information about Downtown Eastside Studio Society

Downtown Eastside Studio Society is a non-profit arts workshop and publishing house in Vancouver. We provide support for people facing social barriers such as mental illness, addictions, and homelessness to undertake creative writing projects and publish their work into books.

Contact:

Downtown Eastside Studio Society: Aaron Golbeck / info@studiosociety.ca

4. Information on the KidSafe Writers’ Room

In partnership with the Vancouver School Board’s Community School Team and the York House School, the KidSafe Writers’ Room offers an after-school tutoring program for students in grades 1 through 7. Writers’ Room tutors also help with KidSafe’s school-break literacy programming. When a child is given the opportunity to work one-on-one with a tutor, he or she can complete projects to the best of his or her ability, and boost literacy skills and self-esteem.

Contact:

KidSafe Writers’ Room: Sarah Maitland / writersroom@kidsafe.ca

Wednesday, December 7, 7:00 p.m.

Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level
Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street
Admission is free. Seating is limited.

To commemorate the 140th anniversary of Emily Carr’s birth on December 13, please join author Susan Crean for commentary on and a screening of Winds of Heaven: Emily Carr, Carvers, and the Spirits of the Forest by Michael Ostroff. This impressionistic film explores the spirit that informed the solitary life of one of Canada’s most celebrated painters. Emily Carr began painting in an era when women didn’t paint, travelling to remote locations that few professional adventurers chose to go. Not only did she adopt the painting techniques of modernism, when such ideas were considered dangerous, Carr chronicled the extraordinary art and culture of native peoples, who were invisible the dominant culture. The film runs 87 minutes.

Salon Sundays are a treat, largely because of a willing audience. Each week a different dynamic; each time a little bit of magic.

There are Sundays left. I look forward to seeing you.

December 4th — Shirley Bear
2pm – 4pm
Shirley Bear returns to Vancouver to read from her 2006 collection Virgin Bones – Belayak Kcikug’nas’ikn’ug at Kogawa House. A visual artist, writer, and activist, she was honored last week at Rideau Hall with the Order of Canada.

December 11th – Open House
1pm – 5pm
Please come to visit Kogawa House for a celebration of the people who created it and keep it running. Can I ask you to bring along something hand-made and simple like a jar of jam, a sheaf of paper, a holiday ornament? We’ll have a craft table with proceeds going to the House.

Place: 1450 West 64th Avenue, east of Granville
To reserve a seat, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Other Kogawa House Events
Special Screening of Winds of Heaven
Emily Carr was born 140 years ago in Victoria this December 13th. Susan Crean will host a screening of Michael Ostroff’s documentary film that was featured at the Vancouver International Film Festival last year. It was based on my book, The Laughing One. And similarly explores Carr’s legacy and First Nations’ history. John Walker was cinematographer, Peter Raymont, producer with Michael Ostroff.

Time: Wednesday, December 7th, 7:00pm
Place: VPL Central Library, Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level

Grey Cup Sunday overshadowed our plans to host Wayde Compton at Historic Joy Kogawa House on Sunday, November 27. Wayde will spend an afternoon with us at some later date. Thanks for your interest.

Join writer-in-residence Susan Crean for her conversation with Shirley Bear, activist, visual artist, and elder of the Maliseet First Nation. Shirley Bear’s writing includes an essay in the third volume of the anthology of writing from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission edited by Ashok Mathur. Two additional pieces are considered essential statements on her art and spiritual philosophy. The first is the opening piece in her book Virgin Bones (2006). The second is her curatorial statement accompanying the exhibition Changers: A Spiritual Renaissance (1989). In November 2011, Shirley Bear was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada. She lives on the Tobique Reserve (Negootkook) in New Brunswick.

“Artists are the movers and changers of the world. They have always been revolutionaries, creating change in thought and style within their societies.”
—Shirley Bear, Changers: A Spiritual Renaissance, Curatorial Statement

Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

Sunday, December 4, 2 to 4pm

Admission by donation.
Space is limited. To reserve a seat, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Also, if you plan to attend, please find us on Facebook and Like this event.

When: Sunday, November 20, 2:00 p.m.

Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue

Cost: Admission is free. Seating is limited.

This event celebrates the publication of a collection of essays that explore Joy Kogawa’s work, both literary and activist. Essay contributors include Rocío G. Davis, Glenn Deer, Jonathan Hart, Julie McGonegal, Ann-Marie Metten, Tim Nieguth, Irene Sywenky, Barbara Turnbull, and Sheena Wilson. In a significant move forward from Kogawa criticism written to date, these essays give attention to Kogawa’s work beyond Obasan. This collection includes an interview with Joy Kogawa, which reveals both new biographical information and connections between Kogawa’s life story and written work.

For more information and to reserve a seat, contact Historic Joy Kogawa House at kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.

We acknowledge the Canada Council author residency program, B.C. Arts Council and private donors for their financial support.

Find us on Facebook and like this event.

When: Saturday, November 19, 10am to 3pm
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

Please join writer-in-residence Susan Crean for a writing workshop with a total of 5 participants.
This workshop is directed at writers with some experience who are writing memoir, biography, history, or a combination of these. We will focus on story development, including research techniques and interviewing.

Together we will answer the following questions:

• What are the pitfalls in writing about someone very different from me?
• How do I know what to research?

Participants will submit 10 pages of writing and a short outline and/or bibliography.

Cost: $125 (includes lunch)

To register, please email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

When: Sunday, October 30, 2 to 4pm
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

Admission by donation
Space is limited
To reserve a seat, please RSVP to kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Tara Beagan, a Toronto playwright of Thompson River Salish heritage, won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for her first play, Thy Neighbour’s Wife. She is currently artistic director of Native Earth Theatre, Canada’s oldest professional Aboriginal performing arts company, and we've brought her to Vancouver for a conversation with our writer-in-residence, Susan Crean, about writing as a means of social change.

Please join us.

Writing Life Workshop

When: Saturday, October 29, 10am to 3pm
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Cost: $125 (includes lunch)

Are you interested in telling your family story? Perhaps you have begun to write the history of your ancestors and their journey to Canada from China.

Please join writer-in-residence Susan Crean and author Larry Wong for a writing life workshop for unpublished and beginning writers who are writing memoir or personal history.

Participating in this workshop will help writers answer the following questions:
– What do I do about the gaps in the story?
– How do I make it interesting for others to read?

This workshop is open for a total of 7 participants. Participants will submit up to 15 pages of work for discussion during the workshop.

To register, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Larry Wong is a local historian and past president of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society, and author of Dim Sum Stories: A Chinatown Childhood, about his childhood in Vancouver’s Chinatown of the 1940s to 60s. Wong’s personal short stories reveal a world filled with people from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Susan Crean is a writer, editor and cultural critic whose most recent book, The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr, was nominated the Governor General’s Award for Literature in 2001 and won the Hubert Evans Prize for Non-Fiction in British Columbia. She is a frequent contributor to magazines such as Geist, This and The Capilano Review. She was the first Maclean-Hunter Chair in Creative Non-Fiction appointed at the University of British Columbia. Susan Crean is currently working on a major book about a head-tax payer, Mr. Wong Dong Wong, whose life she has been researching for the past two years. The book is a large undertaking, and like Crean’s book on Emily Carr, combines the genres of history, biography, journalism and memoir.