Thursdays Writing Collective

Fifteen readers from the four participating groups read on the beautiful summer solstice night June 21, 2011.

The pieces they read are reflections of the generative space we created during our writing encounters at Carnegie throughout the spring. You will have a chance to read some of them, as well as others, in the publication Michael Turner is guest editing to be launched in November at the Memory Festival at the Roundhouse.

Here is the reading order of the night:

Jill Imrie (Write Club) is a makeup artist and writer and is eager to combine both of her passions! Mother to a beautiful daughter and son, Jill discovered the Momoir Project a few years ago and has been writing about her adventures in motherhood ever since. Already published on the Momoir website, Jill is currently submitting various pieces to magazines and blogs.

 Donna Dykeman (Thursdays) is a long-time writer who couldn’t write for a long time. She now supports creativity, wellness and social justice in the V6A community.

Jane Swinglehurst (Write Club) is mum to two boys who in a fit of organization gave birth to them on the same day, two years apart. She also writes in fits and bursts – fairy tales in her pre-teens, heartache in her teens, heartbreak in her twenties and heartburn that has persisted since her pregnancies in her thirties. Jane’s stories have appeared on the Momoir Project Blog and most recently on Points North Magazine’s website.

Don Charters (Thursdays) has lived all his life Vancouver. Though he took up writing late, he self published his novel The White Room and he continues to work on another novel – Virtual Vivid. He lives in Gastown where he endeavors to market his inventions and do voice work with his prose, poetry and comic impression. He is a member of Thursday Writing Collective and writes under the name DC Charters.

Rua Mercier (Writer’s Studio) is from New Zealand. Since 1981, she worked as an Emergency Physician in Vancouver and raised her three beloved children. Her new loves, in her second life, are ballroom dancing and writing. She is working on her memoir dealing with the themes of family and mental illness.

 Sara Graefe (Write Club) is a playwright and screenwriter, and proud queer mom to a three year-old boy. She first became involved with the Momoir Project to get over a bad case of post-partum writer’s block. She has since launched a blog, “Gay Girls Make Great Moms,” published pieces in Literary Mama and on the Momoir Blog, and read her work at the 2010 Mamapalooza Festival in New York City. She teaches in the Creative Writing program at UBC.

 Laifong Leung (Thursdays) is a teacher of language and literature and also works as a translator. She is a new member of Thursdays Writing Collective. She is the author of Morning Sun: Interviews with Chinese Canadian Writers of the Lost Generation; and in Chinese – A Study of Liu Yong and his Lyrics. She is a contributor to and coeditor of the forthcoming History of Literary Interactions Between China and Canada.

 Dhana Musil (Writer’s Studio) is a mother of two girls and makes her living as an Iyengar yoga instructor. She lived in Japan for a decade and is currently in TWS learning how to compile her experiences into a book of short stories. She has been published in The North Shore News, the Outlook and Tennis BC. You can find her at Dhana.ca.

Margot Young (UBC) is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia. She teaches in the areas of constitutional law and poverty law. Her researches focuses on issues of equality law and social justice.

Meg Torwl (Writer’s Studio) works with writing and performance in radio, video, new media and arts advocacy. Her work has appeared in Canada, the US, the UK, and New Zealand. Her writing has been published in Knowing ME, Spin, Eat these Sweet Words, Linescapes, Nuestra Voz, Sinister Wisdom, Magdalena Aotearoa, Canadian Women’s Studies Journal, Sins Invalid, and her own poetry chapbook (in) valid. She is working on a manuscript of poetry and one of short stories. https://integrialmedia.blogspot.com.

Joan Morelli (Thursdays) is a committed activist and performer. She has contributed to four Thursdays chapbooks and is involved in a variety of arts initiatives on the Downtown Eastside, including “Rewind: Memory on Tape,” a short film produced by Thursdays Writing Collective and Bladerunners that screened at 2010’s Memory Festival.

Tanya Hansen (Write Club) is a somewhat frazzled grade four teacher and mom of two amusing boys.  The bulk of her writing was done long ago in her twenties while criss-crossing Europe, journal in hand and backpack on back.  She is convinced that the best piece of writing she ever did was on her Grade 12 English exam.

Yaana Dancer (Writer’s Studio) studied at Emily Carr School of Art and Design  and worked mainly with photo, video and installation but without warning fell in love with the performance art medium. Yaana enrolled in TWS 2011 to work on a non-fiction memoir without regard for the risk of exposure to the abstract poetic form.

Megan Frazer (Write Club) was not an early reader, but from the moment she could put HB pencil to paper, she has been writing stories and lengthy poems. In the eleventh grade, she had the misfortune of no longer being able to despise her English teacher for calling the class “a bunch of philistines” in a mock English accent, when she won a couple of essay writing competitions that he had forced the class to enter.  Megan is currently writing a secret blog about her life and, despite herself, a book of creative non-fiction about growing up in Marpole, which she expects to complete in twenty-minute writing start intervals over the next twenty years.

Antonette Rea (Thursdays) is an award-winning spoken-word poet who has performed at festivals, readings and events throughout the Lower Mainland. Antonette’s writing has appeared in Thursdays chapbooks, Sad mag, Megaphone, Geist and she was recently profiled in Vancouver magazine.

Thanks to the warm audience for supporting DTES voices, and to all the participants of the Writers Caravan. Thanks to the Roundhouse for making this event possible through an artistic residency, to Canada Council, City of Vancouver, SFU’s Community Fund and Carnegie Community Centre and in recognition of the Coast Salish Peoples on whose unceded territory we live and write.

Tags: Anne Hopkinson, Antonettte Rea, Dhana Musil, don charters, Donna Dykeman, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Jane Swinglehurst, Jill Imrie, joan morelli, Laifong Leung, Meg Torwl, Megan Frazer, Rua Mercier, Sara Graefe, Tanya Hansen, TWS, UBC Social Law, Write Club, Writers Caravan, Yaana Dancer