Author Daniela Elza and writer Taslim Jaffer explore the complexities of identity, heritage, and home in this intimate conversation. Through essay, non-fiction and memoir, they reflect on cultural memory, personal transformation, and what it means to belong — in one place or many.
Join moderator Esmeralda Cabral for a thoughtful session that moves between the lyrical and the lived, the personal and the universal.
Location: HSBC Hall, UBC Robson Square
Moderator: Esmeralda Cabral
Readers: Daniela Elza, Is This an Illness or an Accident? (Caitlin Press) | Taslim Jaffer,editor, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home (co-edited with Omar Mouallem Book*hug Press)
About The Moderator
Esmeralda Cabral
Esmeralda Cabral’s first book, a travel memoir entitled How to Clean a Fish and Other Adventures in Portugal was published by University of Alberta Press. Her writing has been published in The Globe and Mail, Understorey Magazine, The Common Online, and others, as well as in ten anthologies. Her most recent publication, “Daughter of Lagoa” is included in the anthology Here and Elsewhere, published by Arquipelago Press in June, 2025. Two of her stories have aired on CBC Radio. Esmeralda was born in the Azores, Portugal, grew up in Alberta, and now lives on Musqueam Land in Vancouver, BC.
About The Readers
Daniela Elza
Daniela Elza’s debut essay collection Is This an Illness or an Accident? (Caitlin Press, 2025) delves into the conflicts and contradictions of what it means to belong, to work, and to find home. Poems from her collection SCAR/CITY (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) were longlisted for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize. Daniela is the recipient of the 2024 Colleen Thibaudeau Award for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry. When she is not writing or volunteering in her community Daniela works as a creative writing instructor, editor, and mentor.
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 anthology, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity and Home (Bookhug*Press, 2024) and the 2025 City of Richmond Writer-in-Residence. Her work-in-progress is an essay collection rooted in her life experiences with themes of cultural inheritance, liminality, identity and motherhood.
