In this interdisciplinary and imaginative reading, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Derek Gladwin, and Kedrick James explore ecology as language, practice, and lived relation. From lyric meditations on forest and fragmentation in sometimes forest, to the speculative storytelling of Bramah’s Discovery, to the critical and creative approaches of Becoming Ecological, these writers consider how we read, imagine, and inhabit the natural world. Together, they invite us to think through more reciprocal and attentive ways of being with the environments around us.

Location: HSBC Hall, UBC Robson Square

Type: Panel, Reading

Moderator: Taslim Jaffer (editor), Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home (co-edited with Omar Mouallem; Book*hug Press)

Readers: Elee Kraljii Gardiner, sometimes forest (Talonbooks) | Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Bramah’s Discovery: Book Three (Harbour Publishing) | Derek Gladwin & Kedrick James, Becoming Ecological (University of Toronto Press)

About The Moderator

Taslim Jaffer

Taslim Jaffer is a writer, editor and writing instructor from Surrey, B.C. with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from University of King’s College. Her bylines appear in Macleans, CBC, WestCoast Families, Peace Arch News & more. She is the winner of the 2022 Creative Nonfiction Collective/Humber Literary Review contest and recipient of a 2021 Silver Canadian Online Publishing Award. Taslim has been teaching memoir and expressive writing in community and rehabilitative settings since 2015 and is a panelist, moderator, and instructor at literary arts festivals. She is co-editor of the award-winning anthology, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity and Home (Bookhug*Press, 2024) and was the 2025 City of Richmond Writer-in-Residence. Her work-in-progress is an essay collection exploring cultural inheritance, liminality and parenting as a first-generation Canadian.

About The Readers

Elee Kraljii Gardiner

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of three poetry collections, serpentine loop, Trauma Head and, most recently, sometimes, forest from Talonbooks, as well as editor of two anthologies (V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and Against Death: 35 Essays on Living). A frequent collaborator, she works across disciplines and administers the Warland Award for hybrid literature. She is the seventh poet laureate of Vancouver.

Renee Sarojini Saklikar

Renee Sarojini Saklikar is the author of six books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU, and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOTJBAP. She lives in East Vancouver.

Derek Gladwin

Derek Gladwin, author and editor of several books including Ecological Exile and Rewriting Our Stories, is an environmental education professor at the University of British Columbia (Musqueam Territory). He also co-leads the Systems Beings Lab, exploring relational approaches to navigate complex societal transitions.

Kedrick James

Kedrick James is a Professor of Language and Literacy Education and the Director of the UBC Okanagan School of Education.