Live Literary Picks

April 19, 2007

Rather than feeling paralyzed by the plethora of upcoming events -- including BC Book and Magazine Week, the North Shore Writer's Festival, and a number of other good readings -- I've decided just this once to do a wee digest of some of my literary picks and pans for the next week.

Firstly, and most low-brow: Did you, or do you, loathe Leah McLaren? For all those who used to squirm, seethe, or squeal as the daughter of Globe and Mail editor Cecily Ross rolled out column after Generation Why column with titles like "Enlightenment comes with balance--and the right clothes" or the classic "Why everyone should be blond like me" -- tonight it's time to meet her successor.

After several years as the National Post's Leah equivalent,"mommy-blogger" Rebecca Eckler became pregnant the night of her engagement party (as chronicled by Eckler in Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-Be) and shifted focus. Of late years, Eckler has moved to the Globe and Mail, where her columns chronicle the woes of the yummy yuppie mummy set and the trials of the "extremes of competitive parenting". She will be at the Vancouver Public Library tonight, reading from her new book Wiped! Life With A Pint-Sized Dictator. Or you can check out her blog, Nine-Pound Dictator, and it's parody, Nine Gram Brain.

If you're feeling more high-culture, Vancouver poet laureate George McWhirter is speaking over at Robson Square. And Friday evening the Kootenay School of Writing sponsors the launch of poet George Bowering's new book, Vermeer's Light, at Spartacus Books.

That same evening, adventurer Colin Angus will be speaking at the Kay Meek Centre in West Van about his book and his experiences as the first person to travel around the world entirely self-propelled. This event is the first of the weeklong North Shore Writer's Festival. My pick o' the fest is next Friday's reading by Ivan E. Coyote and Kate Braid at the Capilano branch of the library. Ivan is a brilliant, engaging performer, and Kate Braid--a former carpenter who writes a vivid, tactile poetry--is at least partly responsible for the recent Canadian renaissance/revival of 'form' poetry (as in sonnets and sestinas instead of blank verse).

Saturday is the kickoff for BC Book and Magazine Week, which has so many events I suggest just checking out the listings. My pick is the 3rd annual main street shuffle, two concurrent literary tours led by Billeh Nickerson and Michael V. Smith. Sure hot girls dancing with bike parts over at antisocial might might not at first glance seem all that bookish, but it's the contribution of Momentum magazine, a paragon of Vancouver bike culture. Both tours winds up at the Western Front, for the opening of their library and reading room.

Poetry begins in sound, and on Sunday, Vancouver New Music presents the first in a series of guided soundwalks through Vancouver neighbourhoods. This one begins by the tennis courts and it's mandatory to rsvp (604-633-0861).

And lastly, if you're looking for something low-key, Cafe Montmartre on Main Street is hosting a BC Federation of Writers reading next Wednesday. Among the readers, Mark Anthony Jarman is particularly good and rarely comes out this way, as he lives in Nova Scotia.

Photo by Lin Pernille.