Fellow nominees for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize: Larissa Lai for “Automaton Diaries” and Fred Wah for “Is A Door”. Fred will be interviewing Larissa Lai for an upcoming issue of Ricepaper magazine. Fred was the eventual winner of the poetry prize! The banners of each prize hangs in the background.
It
was great to attend the 2010 BC Book Prizes. Very happy to see my
friends Fred Wah and Larissa Lai nominated for Dorothy Livesay Poetry
Prize – Fred won! and Charles Demers was nominated for Hubert Evans
Non-Fiction Prize.
My pals! Fred Wah with Cara Ng and Charles Demers – who was nominated for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. Charlie was going around saying I was responsible for his expected niece/nephew. In actual fact, Cara's brother met his wife on the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team. Fate took its course as they fell in love, married last year, and are expecting a baby this year. I am still trying to recruit Charlie and Cara and Fred to the dragon boat team. We will have the “most literary” and “most poetical” dragon boat team in Canada!
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and Masako Fukawa &
Stanley Fukawa, and Dal Ric…hards
nominated for Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award. Great to make new
friends with many of the authors such as Ian Weir, Lori Culbert, Ehor
Boyanowsky.
Todd Wong, Masako Fukawa &
Stanley Fukawa – authors of “Spirit of the Nikkei Fleet: BC’s Japanese Canadian Fishermen”, and Ann-Marie Metten. Ann-Marie and I are the executive director and president of Historic Joy Kogawa House Society. We invited Masako and Stanley to come do a reading at Joy's childhood home.
Terry Glavin, last year's winner of the Lieutanant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence, accepts for Stan Persky, the 2010 winner! Shirley Yew, president of the West Coast Book Prize Society and Lt. Gov. Steven Point present the award.
Ian Weir, author of Daniel O'Thunder – nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, chats with Charles Demers nominated for non-fiction.
And always great to spend some time with Shelagh Rogers!
Shelagh Rogers emceed the BC Book Prizes Gala at Government House. I emceed the BC Book Prizes Soiree back on April 7th, in Vancouver. Shelagh is a great supporter of Historic Joy Kogawa House and the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner. I hope soon to have a Gung Haggis dinner in Nanaimo or Gabriola Dinner with Shelagh as my co-host!
And of course there was dessert!
