Meetings

Open Mic Night

Join us at one of CAA Vancouver’s most popular events — Open Mic Night. All CAA Members and Non-Members are invited to take a turn reading their work, whether it’s published, ready to publish or in first draft format. This is a great way to check the reaction from your listeners, and a good way to find out what Vancouver’s writers are up to.

Register Early! Open Mic Night is set for five minute time slots. To sign up, please e-mail your name, general description of your topic or writing genre to the Programs & Publicity Chair.

Important note: In order to accommodate as many readers as possible, each five minute allocation must include both your introduction and your reading. Tip: The average speaker can read aloud approximately 150 words per minute. You may want to read your presentation aloud and time yourself to ensure that your reading fits within the five minute time limit.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Panel Discussion: Crossing Boundaries — Writing in Different Genres

Moderator: Dennis E. Bolen

Panelists will be announced in mid-January, 2013.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Susan Juby — Award Winning Author

Susan Juby is the award winning author of eight books, including the young-adult Alice McLeod Series, The Woefield Poultry Collective (adult) and Nice Recovery (non-fiction).

Further information about this meeting is pending.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Wednesday, May 8, 2013

TBA

Information is pending for this event, but please reserve the date on your calendar.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Wednesday, June 12, 2013

TBA

Information is pending for this event, but please reserve the date on your calendar.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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No Meetings: July & August

There are no meetings held during the summer months.

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Past Meetings

Archived events are listed in calendar order then moved to a two-year archive when the new year begins.

Meeting: Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Steve Burgess — Award Winning Writer/Broadcaster

Steve Burgess will talk about his writing career and read from his debut book, Who Killed Mom?: A Delinquent Son’s Meditation on Family, Mortality, and Very Tacky Candles.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

Bio

Steve Burgess says his first article was published in the June 26, 1993 edition of the Vancouver Sun. He was a DJ at CFUN radio in Vancouver, and was canned a couple months after the article appeared. After thanking his boss for firing him, he became a full-time writer.

Over the next decade, he was a regular contributor to Vancouver Magazine, and wrote regular columns for the Province, the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Courier newspapers. Other publications where his work appeared were Reader’s Digest, Maclean’s, Elle, Saturday Night, Western Living, Nuvo, Blender, Swerve, BC Business, Enroute and Salon.com. Now, he writes for The Tyee.ca and Minyanville, AOL.com and MSN.com, and he’s a regular columnist for BC Business.

A six time finalist for the National Magazine Awards, Burgess won silver medals for travel and humour. He also won three Western Magazine Awards.

From 2000 to 2003, he hosted the live CBC Newsworld talk show @the end, featuring notables like David Suzuki, Rick Mercer, David Rakoff and Vicki Gabereau. He featured weekly on CBC Newsworld’s Play with Jian Ghomeshi. With appearances on ESPN, CTV, Global, Omni and international television shows plus guest-host gigs on CBC Radio 1 Sounds Like Canada, The Point and the Vancouver afternoon show, Burgess says he’s emceed a number of award shows like the Western Magazine Awards, Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards and BC Smart Growth Awards. He cautions, I am not able to make balloon animals. But I’d probably do a birthday party if things happen to be slow.

US online Publisher’s Weekly says Who Killed Mom? is a witty and compassionate debut, and Burgess honestly highlights the great ruthlessness of familial love, and the power of humor and storytelling to cope with life and death.

The book made the Top 100 Lists for 2011 with The Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and the Top 40 for Canada Reads.

Toronto Star Reviewer James McGowan listed Who Killed Mom? as one of his 10 best for 2011. The book…is a poignant, darkly humourous but very loving memoir of [Burgess’s] parents, his mom especially, and the kids who had to let her go, not an easy thing to do. I found it hard to let her go too.

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Daniel Francis — Writing Non-Fiction

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

Bio

Born and raised in Vancouver, Daniel Francis is the author of two dozen books, principally about Canadian history. Titles include A History of World Whaling (Penguin Canada, 1990), The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992), National Dreams: Myth, Memory and Canadian History (Arsenal Pulp, 1997) and Seeing Reds: The Red Scare of 1918–1919, Canada’s First War on Terror (Arsenal Pulp, 2010).

He is editorial director of the mammoth Encyclopedia of British Columbia (Harbour Publishing), hailed on its appearance in 2000 as one of the most important books about the province ever published. His natural history book Operation Orca: Springer, Luna and the Struggle to Save West Coast Killers Whales (Harbour, 2007; with Gil Hewlett) won ForeWord magazine’s 2007 Book of the Year Award in the nature category and his biography of Mayor Louis D. Taylor, LD: Mayor Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver (Arsenal Pulp 2004) won a City of Vancouver Book Award.

For several years he has written a regular column on books for Geist magazine. In 2010 Daniel was shortlisted for the prestigious Pierre Berton Award which recognizes excellence in bringing Canadian history to a wide popular audience. His most recent book is Selling Canada: Three Propaganda Campaigns that Shaped the Nation (Stanton, Atkins & Dosil, 2011).

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Heidi Greco: Writing is Writing

A conversation with Surrey’s Resident Poet about writing in many genres — poetry, fiction, book reviews and blog posts.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

Bio

She works as a writer and editor. In the spring of 2012 she was appointed as Surrey’s resident poet and was commissioned to write a poem about the city, which she presented to Council as part of one of their meetings.

Heidi often leads creative writing workshops. This summer saw her employed as an instructor in SFU Southbank’s outreach program in Surrey.

Her poems, fiction and book reviews have been published in many formats, both print and online. Her books include poetry collections Siren Tattoo, Rattlesnake Plantain and A: the Amelia Poems as well as a novella, Shrinking Violets.

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Saturday, December 8, 2012

Annual General Meeting & Winter Social

Please join us for the Canadian Authors Association Vancouver Branch AGM and Winter Social Luncheon.

• Time: 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m.
• Place: Coal Harbour White Spot, 1616 West Georgia (at Cardero), Vancouver, BC. (map).
• Cost: $25 per person (includes appetizer, entrée, tea, coffee and soft drinks, HST and gratuity).

Includes:

• Meet & Greet
• Annual General Meeting
• Luncheon
• Book give-aways
• Winning entries of the CAA Vancouver Branch Fiction Contest will be read at the event

Luncheon — $25 per person (includes appetizer, entrée, tea, coffee and soft drinks, HST and gratuity).

• Soup or Salad Appetizer
• Entrée choice:
  • Roast Turkey dinner, stuffing, mashed potatoes and seasonal roasted vegetables
  • Chicken Pot Pie
  • Teriyaki Salmon with jasmine rice and roasted vegetables
  • Vegetarian Tuscan pasta
• Dessert — Cake, supplied by CAA Vancouver
• Tea, Coffee, Soft Drinks

Please RSVP to Margo Bates, Program Chair by Monday, December 3 (include the number of people in your party, and their individual choice of appetizer and entrée).

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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Meeting: Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Special Guest: Alan Twigg, Publisher

Alan Twigg is the publisher of BC BookWorld — educational newspaper about books — and ABCBookWorld.com — Tips, trends and stories about BC’s current literary scene — and its more than two hundred year history.

• Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
• Place: Alliance for Arts and Culture, Suite 100, 938 Howe St., Vancouver
• Cost: CAA Members free; Non-members $10; Students (with student ID) $5

Bio

Alan Twigg has written sixteen books and produced six television documentaries, dozens of award ceremonies and literary events, two university symposia and a music CD for poet and activist Bud Osborn.

He is the publisher/owner of B.C. BookWorld, Canada’s largest circulation independent publication about books, founded in 1987, and he founded and manages abcbookworld.com, a public service project to spread awareness of the literary activity in the province of Canada with the highest per capita book reading rate in the country. The public reference site — for and about more than 10,000 authors and their books — is a free, separately-operated offshoot of B.C. BookWorld, the quarterly educational newspaper about books. The ongoing partnership and technical support of Simon Fraser University has been essential. As well as providing biographical summaries and bibliographies, abcbookworld contains thousands of photos, essays and transcripts of interviews. New book info is added daily to keep pace with almost every new book that is published for, by and about British Columbians. There is no overall literary history of British Columbia — except the abcbookworld.

Twigg co-founded the B.C. Book Prizes and the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness. He founded the VanCity Women’s Book Prize and the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also involved in the founding of Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, when he was theatre critic for Georgia Straight, and he served on the founding board of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing.

In 2000 he became the first recipient of the Gray Campbell Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contributions to literature and publishing in British Columbia. He previously received the first and only ABPBC Media Award in 1988. In 2007, he became the second recipient of the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University “to recognize and support leaders in the humanities who are not necessarily part of the academy,” and he also became the first Writer in Residence at the George Price Centre for Peace in Belize.

For More Information

For more information please contact Margo Bates, VP and Programs & Publicity Chair.

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