There are many things to consider when writing about ourselves and others. Writing about our lives, whether through poetry or narrative prose, often involves the tough stuff — loss, grief, caregiving, aging, and living with challenges like chronic pain. When sharing our stories, is it fair to others if we ‘tell all’ and risk compromising their privacy and/or dignity? Does being selective about what we share compromise how we reconcile truth? The workshop will also include: a short guided meditation, a writing prompt, and a five-minute write followed by a Q&A discussion where participants will have time to ask questions and share some of their own experiences with writing about others.
Location: Room C215, UBC Robson Square
Type: Workshops
Hosts: Esmeralda Cabral, How to Clean a Fish: And Other Adventures in Portugal (University of Alberta Press) | Jónína Kirton, Save Your Prayers — Send Money (Talonbooks)
About The Hosts
Esmeralda Cabral
Esmeralda Cabral’s first book, a travel and food memoir entitled How to Clean a Fish and Other Adventures in Portugal was published in 2023 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 a dozen anthologies, including Here & Elsewhere: An Anthology of Portuguese Canadian Writers, published in 2025 by Arquipelago Press. Two of her stories have aired on CBC Radio. Esmeralda was born in the Azores, Portugal, grew up in Alberta, and now lives on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam Peoples, in Vancouver, BC.
Jónína Kirton
Jónína Kirton, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet currently lives in New Westminster BC, the stolen lands of the Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples. She graduated from the SFU Writers Studio in 2007 and was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. A Talonbooks author she published her fourth book, Save Your Prayers – Send Money, was released in 2026.
