On Thursday, June 9 at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, and poet Carlie Blume for the launch of her debut collection Gigglepuss (2022, Guernica Editions).

At the in-person event, Blume will be joined by moderator Shazia Hafiz Ramji, and guest readers Jen Currin and Hope Lauterbach for a night to celebrate poetry, and human need for connection, self-identity and home.

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.

This event is free + open to all of our community, and registration is mandatory.

Covid Protocols: For all in-person events, attendees must provide proof of vaccination, wear a mask (N95 masks are encouraged and recommended as they offer the best protection), and consent to having their temperature checked at the front door. We ask that if you are showing any symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

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Book + Author

Gigglepuss delves into a past pock marked with loss, broken family dynamics, and the looming shadow of familial mental illness. These poems touch on sexual abuse, lost relationships, the influence of pop culture, and the intensity of motherhood set against the at times humorous backdrop of stark self-awareness, irony and even absurdity.

Carlie Blume was born on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver). She is a 2017 graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio and the author of Gigglepuss (2022). She currently lives on Salt Spring Island, B.C with her husband and two children.

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Guests

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s fiction was shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s 2022 Open Season Awards. Her poetry was shortlisted for the 2021 National Magazine Awards and the 2021 Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry. Shazia’s award-winning first book is Port of Being. She lives in Vancouver and Calgary, where she is at work on a novel.

Jen Currin‘s Hider/Seeker: Stories won a Canadian Independent Book Award, was a finalist for a ReLit Award, and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book. They have also published four collections of poetry, most recently School (Coach House, 2014) and the Audre Lorde Award winner The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010). They live on unceded Qayqayt, Musqueam, and Kwantlen Nation territories in New Westminster, BC and teach in the Creative Writing and English Upgrading Departments at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Hope Lauterbach is a Zambian Canadian writer and poet whose work explores identity and home, and the inner and outer spaces we inhabit. They are the creator of Unbound, a growing reading series and community that highlights and nurtures Black creative voices. In 2021, her writing was commissioned for the Fraser Valley Literary Festival and her work has been featured in Pearls, an Anthology of Work by Douglas College Writing Students, and emerge, The Writer’s Studio Anthology.

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