TONIGHT
Joy Kogawa is reading her new book “Naomi’s Tree” at Vancouver Kidsbooks

Date:  Thursday April 10th, 2008
Time:  7:00pm

Kidsbooks: Author and Illustrator Events

A Musical Evening with Joy Kogawa and Friends
Friday Apr 25, 2008

Tickets: To secure a seat, please email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.
Vancouver composer Leslie Uyeda presents two song cycles written to accompany five of Joy Kogawa’s most exquisite poems. “Stations of Angels” will be performed by soprano Heather Pawsey and flutist Kathryn Cernauskas, and “Offerings” by Heather Pawsey and pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa. These performances are the world premiere of both song cycles, which were composed especially for these three artists. To complement the musical performance, poets Joy Kogawa, Heidi Greco, Marion Quednau, and Vancouver’s poet laureate George McWhirter will read.

Set
in the Historic Joy Kogawa House, this National Poetry Month event takes place in Joy Kogawa’s childhood home—a place that commemorates both the brightest hopes and the darkest hours of Canadian history. The house, representative of many properties owned by Canadians of Japanese descent, was confiscated during the Second World War when its occupants and 20,000 other Japanese-Canadians were interned. After a hard-fought effort by The Land Conservancy and the Kogawa House Committee to save the house from demolition, it is being restored, and beginning in the spring of 2009, will host a writer-in-residence program.

Event supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the League of Canadian Poets.