Canadian writer Canisia Lubrin will read from her debut poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn Publishers) on Nov. 6 as the featured guest at York University’s Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series.
Lubrin was born in St. Lucia and now lives in Whitby, Ont. She completed her undergraduate degree at York, where she won the President's Prize in poetry and the Sylvia Ellen Hirsch Memorial Award in creative writing. She then went on to earn an MFA from the University of Guelph. She has since worked as an arts administrator and community advocate, and currently teaches at Humber College. She has had work published in several literary journals, but this is her first book.
Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award by the League of Canadian Poets, Voodoo Hypothesis was released in October 2017. The poetry collection seeks to subvert the imperial construct of "Blackness" and reject the contemporary and historical systems that paint Black people as inferior through constant parallel representations of "evil" and "savagery." It holds up a torch to the narratives of the ruling class, and shows us the restorative possibilities that exist in language itself.
Canadian Writers in Person is a for-credit course for students, presented by the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (LA&PS). It is also a free-admission event for members of the public. All readings take place at 7 p.m. on select Tuesday evenings in 206 Accolade West Building, Keele Campus.
Other presentations scheduled in this series include:
Nov. 20: Joel Hynes, We All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night, HarperCollins
Dec. 4: Stevie Howell, I left nothing inside on purpose, M&S
2019
Jan. 15: Michael Redhill, Bellevue Square, Random House
Jan. 29: Kerri Sakamoto, Floating City, Random House
Feb. 12: Kim Fu, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, HarperCollins
March 6: Katerena Vermette, The Break, House of Anansi Press
March 19: David Chariandy, Brother, Penguin Random House
Canadian Writers in Person is a course offered by the Culture and Expression program in the Humanities Department in York’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies. For more information, contact Professor Gail Vanstone at gailv@yorku.ca.