If you love meeting talented writers and hearing them read from their published work, or just want to soak up a unique cultural experience, don’t miss the opportunity to attend the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series.
The series gives attendees an opportunity to get up close and personal with an eclectic group of 11 authors while having the unique opportunity to engage with them in a dialogue about their work.
Canadian Writers in Person is a for-credit course for students. It is also a free-admission event for members of the public. All readings take place at 7 p.m. on select Tuesday evenings via Zoom. Links for each reading can be found here: https://cltr.huma.laps.yorku.ca/canwrite/.
This year’s lineup consists of a unique selection of emerging and established Canadian writers, whose writing explores a broad range of topics and geographical and cultural landscapes. Featuring seasoned and emerging poets and fiction writers, the series highlights Canada’s ever-growing literary talent.
The series will continue on March 9 with a reading of Mysterious Dreams of the Dead (Anvil Press) by Terry Watada.
Watada is the author of two previous novels, The Three Pleasures and The Blood of Foxes, a collection of short fiction, Daruma Days, four books of poetry, two children’s books, the nonfiction title Bukkyo Tozen: A History of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in Canada 1905 – 1995 and two manga style comic books. He is also a musician and recording artist. Watada lives in Toronto.
At the heart of Mysterious Dreams of the Dead is the spiritual search for a father who died in a plane crash north of Lake Superior when his son was 15. Mike Shintani decides in his early 30s to address the curious circumstances surrounding his father’s death; the senior Shintani’s body was never found, and wolves circled the crash site as if guarding the area.
The impetus for Mike’s search for truth is a diary he found in the basement of his home. It was obviously his father’s, but it was written in Japanese. Mike never knew his father could write Japanese. He himself could neither read nor write the language. It turned out, the book was a dream diary, filled with poetry, descriptions of the surreal and the story of a love affair with a woman named Chiemi.
Another great mystery of Mike’s life is the behaviour of one of his best friends, Boku Sugiura, who decides one day to rob a bank, in the name of his grandfather and redress for Japanese Canadians.
Through elements of the Japanese ghost story (“kwaidan”), magic realism and Buddhist myth, secrets are revealed and explored.
This 2020-21 Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series will conclude on March 23 with a reading of Cecily Nicholson’s Wayside Sang (Talonbooks).
Canadian Writers in Person (AP/CLTR 1953 6.0A) is a course offered in the Culture & Expression program in the Department of Humanities in York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. For more information on the series, visit yorku.ca/laps/canwrite, or email Professor Gail Vanstone at gailv@yorku.ca or Professor Leslie Sanders at leslie@yorku.ca.