Announcing Touchstone Centre’s upcoming online summer inter session Words at Work program.

Alice Walker’s beautiful little story “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” evoked a thoughtful, Words at Work conversation about beauty and truth
of Black women with luxury of the “room of one’s own” Woolf wants. Walker recommends looking “high and low” to glimpse overlooked creative sparks.

More detail’s coming soon.

Announcing new fall Words at Work program at Touchstone Centre!

2025 Reading List Homepage | Vancouver Writers Fest Festival Reading List October 20–26, 2025 The Reading List represents over 115 authors who will be joining us at our flagship Festival, taking place this year from October 20–26 (along with so...

Exciting news! The Vancouver Writers Festival reading list and program is here! Can't wait to check out the great new novels, short stories and poetry coming in October for my upcoming fall Words at Work Program. So many great writers! Here's the Festival program link: writersfest.bc.ca/2025-books

Reading List 2025 | Vancouver Writers Fest ...read more

Here’s the link: writersfest.bc.ca/reading-list...

This month I attended the Vancouver Writers Festival 2025 previews for the October Festival! What a packed program of fantastic writing on the beautiful Granville Island! Here is a sneak peek at the new reading list for this year’s event. lnkd.in/g5S3ie_k

a cartoon of a person surrounded by books with the words i want to read all the books ALT: a cartoon of a person surrounded by books with the words i want to read all the books

Looking forward to Vancouver Writers Festival preview this month! Looking forward to an introduction to remarkable new and familiar writers! Some of them will likely make it into the list for my online Words at Work: Literature as “Equipment for Living” program this fall!

2025 Blaney Lecture: Kaveh Akbar on Poetry & Spirituality YouTube video by Poets.org

The 2025 Blaney Lecture with Kabeh Akbar on poetry and spirituality invigorates poetry’s simple, profound meaning and purpose. m.youtube.com/watch?v=4NDx...

Harold Johnson’s Power of Story offered a frame for our conversation that helped each of us to find the medicine in each story and poem.

Jessica Johns Bad Cree, Maya Angelou ‘s All God’s Children…Miriam J A Chancey’s Village Weaver, Vi Plotnikoff’s Gabriel and the Salesman and The Last Rose…weave together models for building allies, resilience and community, and creatively managing adversity.

The Touchstone Centre winter Words at Work:Literature as Equipment for Living is wrapping up with a few of Jess Housty’s profound poems, “Wilderness” and Transformation”. So many unexpected gifts of connection and community from Housty and the other remarkable writers we looked at in this program.

Yes

This feels so relevant right now.

Reading Bad Cree by Jessica Johns today. Johns’ traces a model of Iskewesis collaboration and community that offers much to individuals meeting the greedy, hungry weetigo in its many forms.

Act of economic war!