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Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library and BC and Yukon Book Prizes.
Meet acclaimed local writers and celebrate their trailblazing new books at this Incite event, featuring authors shortlisted for this year’s BC and Yukon Book Prizes! We’re thrilled to welcome all five finalists for the 2025 Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes, which recognizes writing that challenges or provokes the ideas and forces that shape what writing, art, and/or society can become.
- Carleigh Baker, Last Woman: Stories — A blistering short story collection that delves into fear for the future, intergenerational misunderstandings, and the complexities of belonging.
- Billy-Ray Belcourt, Coexistence: Stories — A must-read collection of intersecting stories about Indigenous love and loneliness from the author of A History of My Brief Body and A Minor Chorus.
- Christopher Cheung, Under the White Gaze: Solving the Problem of Race and Representation in Canadian Journalism — A candid investigation into the state of race in Canadian media today that challenges the way we think about the news, and calls on newsrooms to think critically about representation.
- Sarah Leavitt, Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love — A poignant and beautifully illustrated graphic memoir articulating cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s grief after her partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance.
- Loghan Paylor, The Cure for Drowning — A boundary-pushing love story and wartime Canadian historical novel that boldly centres queer and non-binary characters in unprecedented ways.
The prize’s namesake, Jim Deva, opened Little Sister’s Gay and Lesbian Bookstore and Art Emporium with his partner Bruce Smyth, and was a pillar of the LGBTQ+ community, championing the rights of the queer community, sex workers, and anyone who was not free to be themselves. In a time of fraying social connections and disturbing attacks on the rights of multiple marginalized communities, we are honoured to gather and discuss books that challenge, comfort, and inspire visions of a more empathetic society. The event will be hosted by Megan Cole, the BC & Yukon Book Prizes Interim Executive Director.
About Incite
Presented by the Vancouver Writers Fest and Vancouver Public Library, Incite is a free quarterly series offering fascinating conversations with celebrated authors and emerging talents. Incite is open to all, in-person at the VPL’s central branch or online. Books will be for sale by Book Warehouse, a division of Black Bond Books, and most events will have a signing after the talk. Can’t make the date? Sign up for the livestream to receive the recording in your inbox!
Participants and Speakers
Carleigh Baker
CARLEIGH BAKER is an nêhiyaw âpihtawikosisân /Icelandic writer who lives as a guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwu7mesh, and səl̓ilwəta peoples. Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Essays, The Short Story Advent Calendar, and The Journey Prize Stories. She also writes reviews for the Globe and Mail and the Literary Review of Canada. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings (Anvil, 2017) won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award, the Emerging Indigenous Voices Award for fiction, and the BC Book Prize Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award.
Billy-Ray Belcourt
BILLY-RAY BELCOURT is a poet, author, and scholar from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection, This Wound Is a World, which was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His third book, A History of my Brief Body, was a Globe & Mail Best Book and a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Belcourt is a recipient of the prestigious Rhodes scholarship and an Indspire Award, the highest honour the Indigenous community bestows on its leaders. His fourth book, A Minor Chorus, was long listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Loghan Paylor
LOGHAN PAYLOR is a queer, trans author who lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Their short fiction and essays have previously appeared in Room and Prairie Fire, among others. Paylor has a Master’s in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, and a day job as a professional geek. The Cure for Drowning is their first novel.
Sarah Leavitt
SARAH LEAVITT is the author of Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love; the graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me; and the award-winning historical fiction comic Agnes, Murderess. She is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at UBC in Vancouver, BC, where she has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate comics classes since 2012.
Christopher Cheung
CHRISTOPHER CHEUNG is a staff reporter at one of Canada’s best-known online news sources, The Tyee. He worked previously at Metro and the Vancouver Courier.
Megan Cole
MEGAN COLE is a tattooed food enthusiast with an obsessive reading habit. As a journalist Megan has worked for community newspapers, CBC Radio, and Canadian Press. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in The Puritan, Invisiblog, untethered, Hungry Zine, Chatelaine, and is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead. Megan is working on her first creative nonfiction book titled Nice Boys Don’t Kiss Like That: Womanhood Explored through ‘90s Rom-Coms, MSN Messenger, and First Loves. When Megan isn’t writing, reading, knitting or cooking, she’s working as the director of programming and communications for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. She lives and works on the territory of the Tla’amin Nation in BC.