Join us for a conversation with authors Ar iel Gordon\, Yvonne Blomer\, and Sue Sorenson as they discuss their newest books\, Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Gordon)\ , Death of Persephone: A Murder (Blomer) and Acutely Life (Sorensen). The event will be moderated by author Ma rk Morton.
\nThis program is presented in partnership with Words Wor th Books.
\nAriel Gordon
\nAriel Gordon (she/her) is a Winnipeg/Tre aty 1 Territory&ndash\;based writer\, editor and enthusiast. She is the ri ngleader of Writes of Spring\, a National Poetry Month project with the Wi nnipeg International Writers Festival that appears in the Winnipeg Free Pr ess. Her previous work of nonfiction\, Treed: Walking in Canada& rsquo\;s Urban Forests\, was shortlisted for the Carol Shields Wi nnipeg Book Award. Gordon&rsquo\;s essay &ldquo\;Red River Mudlark&rdquo\; was second-place winner of the 2022 Kloppenburg Hybrid Grain Contest in G rain magazine and other work appeared recently in FreeFall\, Columba Poetr y\, Canthius and Canadian Notes &\; Queries. Gordon&rsquo\;s fourth col lection of poetry\, Siteseeing: Writing nature &\; climate across t he prairies\, was written in collaboration with Saskatchewan poet Bre nda Schmidt and appeared in fall 2023.
\nAriel's latest collection\, Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak &\; Wynn\, June 2024) explores her fascination with all mushrooms\, not just those you can eat. In these engaging essays she takes the reader through ditches and pu ddles in search of morels\, through the hallways of a mushroom factory\, d own city sidewalks and beside riverbanks as she considers things found and fungal. Along the way there are entertaining stories of the perils of mus hroom identification\, including mailed mushrooms that have liquefied\, or terrifying thoughts of Canadian geese being fed hallucinogenic mushrooms as well as thoughtful analysis of the ways mushrooms knit our ecosystems t ogether and the ways we knit our lives and communities together. Smart\, f unny and poetic\, Gordon moves seamlessly from the natural world to the pe rsonal in these essays\, examining the interconnectedness of all things an d delighting in the rich variety of the world around her.
\nYvonne Blomer
\nYvonne Blomer \; is an award-winning poet and nonfiction writer who has edited five antholo gies\, most recently: Hologram: Homage to PK Page. Yvonne holds a n MA with Distinction from the University of East Anglia and is the past p oet laureate of Victoria\, BC. She lives on the territories of the Lək ̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people.
\nYvonne's si xth book of poems is Death of Persephone: A Murder\, a mystery ba sed on the Persephone myth\, the noir mystery genre and the ongoing violen ce to girls and women. In Death of Persephone\, the patriarchal m yth of the maiden taken\, raped\, and made the potent and sexualized queen of the underworld is questioned\, altered\, flipped. Instead\, we have St ephanie\, a girl of seven\, taken and raised by her Uncle H. who is obsess ed by her\, tries to control her\, to keep her\, to have her even as she b looms out from underneath him. In poems both lyrical and narrative\, a wom an paints Hecate on a building\, a Hyacinth Macaw flies overhead\, a detec tive bumbles from crime to crime. This is a city with a vast underground w here bats hang and paperwhites bloom\, a city where men still rule. Who se es what\, who will pay\, and who will survive in this ancient story altere d at the core?
\nHer previous books include The Last Show on Ear th\, 2022\, which explores grief\, love and climate change. \;
\nSue Sorensen
\n\nIn her poems\, Sue Sorensen makes visits to the Village Va nguard jazz club in June 1961\, to Freud&rsquo\;s study in London\, to the novelist Henry James. Working her allusive and spirited way inside books and paintings\, she has acute meetings with musicians\, photographers\, fi ctional characters&mdash\;and most of all herself.
\nProgrammer:&nbs p\; Ikhlas
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