Please join us Saturday, May 26 at 7:00 p.m. at Wheatberries Bakery/Bistro, 818 Gibsons Way, Gibsons for this double reading of young poets from the Yukon. Clea Roberts’ book, Here is Where We Disembark, is published by Freehand Books and Jamella Hagen’s book, Kerosene, is published by Nightwood Editions.
Clea Roberts lives in Whitehorse, Yukon on the Takhini River. Her poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, CV2, The Dalhousie Review, The International Feminist Journal of Politics, Lake: A Journal of Arts and the Environment, The Malahat Review, Prism International, and Room. Roberts has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Centre, the Atlantic Centre for the Arts, and is a three-time recipient of the Yukon Government Advanced Artist Award. Her work has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and her poem, “When We Begin to Grow Old,” won the After Al Purdy Poetry Contest. Clea co-organizes the Whitehorse Poetry Festival.
Jamella Hagen grew up in Hazelton, BC and has lived in Vancouver, Brazil and South Korea. Her poems have
Clea Roberts
Jamella Hagen
appeared in journals across Canada including Arc, Event and The Malahat Review as well as in the anthologies Unfurled: Collected Poetry from Northern BC Women, Ice Floe: New and Selected Poems and The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2010. Her work has won The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, placed third in This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt and been shortlisted for a CBC Literary Award. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from UBC, is a former executive editor ofPRISM international and has coordinated the Whitehorse Poetry Festival. She currently lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, and is an instructor at Yukon College. This reading is sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Writers’ Union of Canada and is free to the public. 
Brendan McLeod
SLAM poetry champion Brendan McLeod will perform on Wednesday, February 8 at 7:00 pm at Wheatberries Bakery Bistro in Gibsons.
All week he will be working with classes at Chatelech and Elphinstone Secondary. His visit is sponsored by the Celebration of Authors, Books and Community
(CABC) joint initiative of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts
and School District No. 46(Sunshine Coast) that is supported by a variety
of community partners.
Brendan McLeod has been Vancouver’s SLAM poetry Champion, the Canadian SLAM poetry champion, and finished second at the 2005 World SLAM championships, held in Holland. As a novelist, he beat out over 500 original entries to win the 2006 International 3 Day Novel Contest for his book, “The Convictions of Leonard McKinley“. He has performed all over the world, at over 200 poetry readings, and is a touring member of The Fugitives spoken word and music troupe. He has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Waterloo.
The Gibsons Live Poets Society is pleased to announce its fall line-up of poets. Four exciting poets will read for us: Patricia Young on September 24 and Matt Rader on September 30, and then in the following month, Steven Heighton on October 16 and Gillian Wigmore on October 24. Please see photos of and details about these poets in individual posts about each reading. Please join us for these free readings sponsored by Canada Council for the Arts and the League of Canadian Poets. All readings will take place at Wheatberries Bakery/Bistro at 7:00 p.m. Books will be available at each reading.
The Gibsons Live Poet
s Society presents Gillian Wigmore at Wheatberries Bakery/Bistro on Saturday, October 22 at 7:00 p.m. This reading is sponsored by Canada Coucil for the Arts and is free to the public.
Gillian Wigmore’s poetry book soft geography (Caitlin, 2007) won the 2008 ReLit Award and was short listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her work has been anthologized and published widely in literary journals. Recent work has been short listed for the Malahat Long Poem Prize and the Great BC Novel Prize. She lives in Prince George, BC.
The Gibsons Live Poets Society presents Steven Heighton at Wheatberries Bakery/Bistro on Sunday, October 16 at 7:00 p.m.
This reading is sponsored by Canada Council for the Arts and is free to the public.
Steven Heighton’s most recent books are the novel Every Lost Country and a poetry collection, Patient Frame. His previous novel, Afterlands, has appeared in six countries, was a New York Times Book Review editors’ choice as well as a best of year choice in ten publications in Canada, the US, and the UK, and has been optioned for film. His previous poetry collections include The Address Book and The Ecstasy of Skeptics. His poems and stories have appeared in London Review of Books, Poetry, Tin House, The Walrus, Europe, TLR, Poetry London, Brick, and Best English Stories. Heighton has won a number of awards—including four National Magazine Award golds—and has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.
