Join us on Wednesday, February 17, 2021, at 7 PM PST for a free, online event for Black History Month featuring Chantal Gibson and Otoniya J. Okot Bitek in conversation with Ebony Magnus.

In November 2020, a 240 square foot literary art installation was mounted on the streetfront windows of Belzberg Library at the intersection of Hastings and Richards in downtown Vancouver. Made possible by the pandemic-induced closure of the library, the piece offers commentary on the ongoing displacement of peoples and systemic inequity that permeates the social landscape. Collaborators Gibson, Okot Bitek, and Magnus will discuss what it means for representations and imaginations of Black women to occupy geographical and intellectual real estate in the world today.

Use of Eventbrite is voluntary. Eventbrite data is stored on U.S. servers. If you prefer not to use Eventbrite to register for this event for privacy reasons, please email Chloe Riley at car11@sfu.ca.

Presenters’ Bios

Chantal Gibson

Chantal Gibson is an award-winning writer-artist-educator living on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples. Working in the overlap between literary and visual art, her work confronts colonialism head on, imagining the BIPOC voices silenced in the spaces and omissions left by cultural and institutional erasure. Her visual art has been exhibited at the ROM, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Open Space Victoria, and the Senate of Canada.

Her debut book of poetry, How She Read (Caitlin Press, 2019) explores the representation of Black women in Canadian history, art, literature. It won the 2020 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the 2020 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. She teaches writing and design communication in the School of Interactive Arts & Technology at Simon Fraser University.

Otoniya J. Okot Bitek

Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek is a poet. Her 100 Days (University of Alberta 2016) was nominated for several writing prizes including the 2017 BC Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Alberta Book Awards and the 2017 Canadian Authors Award for Poetry. It won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Lushei Prize for African Poetry. Otoniya is also the author of Sublime: Lost Words (The Elephants 2018). She is the 2020 Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence at Simon Fraser University and a 2021 Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow, also at Simon Fraser University. Otoniya lives with gratitude on the unceded, ancestral and traditional lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people in what we currently call Vancouver.

Ebony Magnus

Ebony Magnus is the Head of Belzberg Library at SFU’s Vancouver campus. She holds a Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of British Columbia and a Masters of Arts in English Literature from Carleton University. Through her work in libraries, she seeks to undermine myths of neutrality and challenge oppressive power structures while creating space for community growth and sustenance. Ebony’s research in critical library assessment interrogates with an aim to dismantle the influence of whiteness and white supremacy in libraries.

About the event

A password to access this event will be sent to all registrants via email in the days and hours preceding the event.

Accessibility Information

If you have any requests, concerns, or questions regarding accessibility at this event, please contact Chloe Riley by email: car11@sfu.ca

Technology requirements

This event will be presented using Zoom. To engage fully you will need:

-- A laptop, computer, or smartphone

-- A stable internet connection

-- Speakers or headphones

Protecting your privacy

To ensure that we are using online meeting technology in a privacy-conscious way, we are following best practices for this online event:

-- We will only circulate the meeting link to those who are registered for the event

-- We will password protect the meeting

-- We will enable end-to-end encryption

-- We will not use attention tracking

To protect your own privacy:

We suggest that you do not use your Facebook profile to log into the event. This is so that the webinar platform can’t cross-reference you with your Facebook account.

We remind you that whatever you say or enter into chat in the virtual event is public, so please do not share sensitive information about yourself or others, and do not say anything you do not wish to enter the public space.

To protect the privacy of others we ask that:

You do not record or photograph yourself, other participants, or the hosts during the event, unless permission is requested and given.

Partners

SFU Library, SFU Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, SFU Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, SFU English Department, SFU School of Interactive Arts and Technology.