Whether it’s our relationships to pop culture, religion, or race (or sometimes all three), the world we grow in impacts how we understand ourselves. These three memoirs examine the social environments we grow up in, how they shape our sense of belonging, and how through these routes of reflection we can discover ourselves.
Hybrid events are held in person, you will also be able to watch it live streamed from our Youtube channel.
Location: Room C485, UBC Robson Square
Type: Non-fiction
Facilitator: Leanne Boshman
Readers: Jen Sookfong Lee, SUPERFAN: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart (Penguin Random House Canada) | Tara MacLean, Song of the Sparrow: A Memoir (HarperCollins) | Harrison Mooney, Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery (HarperCollins)
About The Facilitator
Leanne Boschman is a Vancouver Island-based writer living and working on the traditional territories of the Cowichan Tribes and Malahat Nation. Her poetry has been published in Geist Magazine, Prism international, Other Voices, Dandelion Magazine, Room, Arc Poetry, and Grain. As well, her poems have been published in several anthologies. Her collection Precipitous Signs: A Rain Journal was published by Leaf Press in 2009; in it she explores colonial narratives of settlement and the lived experience of women in labour markets and domestic settings. Leanne completed her PhD in the Languages, Cultures, and Literacies program at SFU and has collaborated as a curriculum developer and educator in several BC communities. She presently works with adult learners in the Pacheedaht First Nation for Vancouver Island University. Leanne’s second collection of poems is entitled Here at the Crux (Silver Bow Publishing, 2022).
About The Readers
Canadian singer/songwriter Tara MacLean has been an internationally renowned and award-winning recording and touring artist for over 25 years. In 2008, Tara took a hiatus from being a touring artist to focus on being a full-time mother, raising her family on the beautiful west coast of Canada. She never stopped writing music. In 2016 she returned to music with a vengeance, writing, producing, and directing her hit show “Atlantic Blue-The Stories of Atlantic Canada’s Iconic Songwriters”. Tara went to release “Songs from Atlantic Blue” and the full-length album,“Deeper”, before releasing her first book and an accompanying soundtrack in March 2023. “Song of the Sparrow” hit the best seller list the first week out and has returned there several times. Tara is currently busy travelling overseas and from coast to coast at home in Canada.
Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her family in North Burnaby. Her books include The Conjoined, nominated for International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, The End of East, The Shadow List, and Superfan. Jen acquires and edits for ECW Press and co-hosts the literary podcast Can’t Lit.
