Visionary Authors Read in Sidney

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Friday, June 5th, 2015
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

The two authors who will be reading June 5th at the Red Brick Café in Sidney come from very different backgrounds but both hold a reverence for words and the power of storytelling. North Saanich’s award-winning poet, Pamela Porter, is also a children’s author. She has received many awards for her poetry and her verse novel Crazy Man won the Canadian Governor General’s Award in 2005.

Her third collection of poetry, Cathedral, was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award for the best book of poetry by a woman in Canada. When asked about her poetry, Pamela says, “I think the poet’s vision is to see the world again for the first time, and I try to help the reader see something, no matter small or large, as utterly new, as though we have all reverted to childhood where everything holds the shock of the new.” Monique Gray Smith holds her writer’s lens to the Indigenous experience based on her own life and her lineage as Cree, Lakota and Scottish. Her first book, Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience, is loosely based on her own life. Monique details how she was able to overcome her parents' divorce, the loss of her grandmother, substance abuse, and fear of personal failure to discover more about her culture and herself. Through her writing Monique hopes to “help shift paradigms and perspectives of us as Indigenous peoples in Canada. I am always in awe of the strength of the human spirit.” She is now writing a second book about Tilly with the working title of Tilly and the Elders. Monique lives with her family on Lkwungen Territory in Victoria.

The evening of readings by these two esteemed authors is a fundraiser for the 2015 Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival to be held October 2-4, 2015. The Festival will feature 19-20 award-winning authors from Western Canada, including well-known names such as John Vaillant, Richard Wagamese, Fred Stenson, Lorna Crozier and Arleen Pare. More at www.sidneyliteraryfestival.ca under “Other Events”.

Tickets at Tanner’s Books, Sidney and Munro’s Books, Victoria