Expected to be a firework of ideas, this conversation moderated and envisioned by our Guest Curator, Omar El Akkad, takes us into the terrifying wildness of the Anthropocene. A poet, a novelist, and an essayist explore how we orient, then navigate, in a rapidly fracturing reality. Madhur Anand evokes stunning “explicit, exponential beauty” (Publisher’s Weekly) in her poetry that examines living as a poet and a scientist in this era. Kim Fu’s short stories make the familiar strange and the strange familiar in short stories that reckon with technological consequence and human contradiction—and what happens when we come face to face with monsters in the deep. Amazon Canada First Novel Award-shortlisted author John Elizabeth Stintzi joins us with My Volcano—a pre-apocalyptic vision following characters amidst various eruptions (personal and planetary). What magic for surviving our future will these writers conjure together?

Presented in partnership with SFU Library.

Event Participants:

Madhur Anand

MADHUR ANAND is the Governor General’s Awardwinning author of the memoir This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart, and the poetry collections A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes and Parasitic Oscillations. She is a professor of ecology and sustainability at the University of Guelph. (ONTARIO)

Omar El Akkad

OMAR EL AKKAD is an author and journalist. His debut novel, American War, was listed as one of the best books of the year by GQ, NPR, and Esquire. His new novel, What Strange Paradise, won the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, and the Oregon Book Award. He joins the Vancouver Writers Fest as Guest Curator in 2022. (EGYPT/ONTARIO/UNITED STATES)

Kim Fu

KIM FU is the author of For Today I Am a Boy, which won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and the Canadian Authors Emerging Writer Award. Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century was a NPR and Book Riot Best Book of 2022. (ALBERTA/ UNITED STATES)

John Elizabeth Stintzi

JOHN ELIZABETH STINTZI is the author of My Volcano and Vanishing Monuments (finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award), as well as the poetry collection Junebat. They received the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award and the Sator New Works Award. Their writing has appeared in The Malahat Review, Kenyon Review, and others. (ONTARIO/UNITED STATES)