Join us for the Opening Gala of Word Vancouver at the Vancouver Public Library with MC Chris Bose, the 2025 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence.
An evening of storytelling and music, and to meet our special guests, with Indigenous Storyteller in Residence at the VPL, Chris Bose, Word Vancouver Indigenous Curator Kayla MacInnis and Word Vancouver LGBTQ2S+ Curator Candie Tanaka.
Chris Bose
Chris Bose is a writer, musician and multi-disciplinary artist hailing from Kamloops, B.C. A member of the Nlaka’pamux and Secwepemc Nations, Chris has been a professional storyteller for almost 30 years. His work has been published in a variety of publications and exhibited in galleries. He has also shared traditional Nlaka’pamux and Secwepemc stories at schools, festivals, and cultural events across Canada. “The stories I share come from my grandmother and grandfather, my Yeah Ya7 and Spa7 Pu La7,” says Bose. “They were revered storytellers who travelled across Canada in the 1970s, and I now continue their legacy. I’m looking forward to sharing these stories and my culture to help others – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – find their voice.”
Kayla MacInnis
Kayla MacInnis is a Métis storyteller with Red River roots on her father’s side, and Scottish through her maternal grandfather, and Ukrainian/Polish through her maternal grandmother. Born in the prairies and raised by the sea, her work lives at the intersection of the visual and the written, exploring how stories dwell not only in words, but in the body, in colour, in fabric, and in the land. She is currently completing her Master’s in English at Simon Fraser University with a focus on print culture, and hopes to pursue a PhD and eventually teach. Alongside her academic work, she is a freelance writer and photographer and a research assistant with The People and the Text. Rooted in a phenomenology of seeing, Kayla’s work considers how experiences shape our perception of the world and how storytelling can recreate those impressions beyond language. Her practice moves across journalism, academia, poetry, sound design, film, and other experimental forms that translate memory and embodiment into sensory experience. She is currently working on her first poetry collection, The Deepest Blue, a mixed-medium book blending poetry with photography, indigo dyeing, sashiko embroidery, cyanotype printing, and tactile texture. In all her work, Kayla moves toward stories that are not only read, but felt.
Candie Tanaka
Candie Tanaka is a multiracial trans writer, artist and librarian challenging the binaries continually reconstructed between self and other while exploring archive and memory in a socio-political context. They are a creative writing graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University and have a BFA in Intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. Their first YA book, Baby Drag Queen was published with Orca Books in April 2023 and was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. They’ve also published work in Resonance: Essays on the Craft of Life and Writing with Anvil Press and This Will Only Take A Minute: Canadian Flash Fiction with Guernica Editions. Forthcoming publications include an essay in the Queer Country Crossroads Anthology with Caitlin Press in October 2025.
