writer, publisher, dreamer
Sharing a memorable evening with author Claire Sicherman, as she reads from her new book Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation.
The granddaughter of Holocaust Survivors, Claire’s work explores the silence that often surrounds traumatic experiences and the ways in which trauma weaves through generations. This is a timely book with strong, compelling writing in the braided narrative format. The stuff of powerful ancestral healing!
I’m honored to be reading at the SFU TWS at the Cottage Bistro on December 7, 2017, alongside the talents of Kendall Anne Dixon and Grant Lawrence!
I’m reading “It’s All Fun and Games”, an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir Burning Woman. Published in Prairie Fire Spring 2017, this is a swashbuckling tale of fencing, blindness, eye patches, and pirates! Come join us for some excellent storytelling and poetry!
My personal essay “Get Used to It”, has been published in Rebel Mountain’s Queer Anthology Breaking Boundaries: LGBTQ Writers on Coming Out and Into Canada.
This is my official queer coming out piece (OMG!) and the third excerpt to be published from my forthcoming memoir Burning Woman. It’s really humbling to be part of this important, cutting edge anthology featuring Canadian LGBTQ writers sharing their stories and emotional journeys on coming out. Look for author readings in the new year in locations across Canada. 
It’s All Fun and Games
Extremely pleased to see publication of It’s All Fun and Games in Spring 2017 Prairie Fire! This is the second piece of writing from my forthcoming memoir Burning Woman to be published!
UBC Creative Writing Graduate MFA Reading
Very excited to be reading from my forthcoming memoir Burning Woman at the UBC Creative Writing MFA Graduate reading. Congrats to all our 2016 graduates! It’s been a long hard road, but we made it!
Prism Launch Party 2016
We’re excited to invite you to our spring issue launch party with some of our favourite local literary magazines. Join PRISM, SAD Mag, Room Magazine, EVENT, Geist, and subTerrain for an evening of poetry, prose, and prizes at the wonderful Lost + Found Café next Thursday, May 5th at 7pm.
We’ll have some great prize giveaways (yes, the Wheel of Fruit from AWP will be back!) and a killer reading line up. Keep in the loop by RSVPing to our Facebook event here. We hope to see you there!
PRISM international 54.3 Spring Issue, featuring the HORNED MELON!
You may have noticed something’s different about PRISM–something brighter, maybe a little weird, and unlike anything you’ve seen before. We’re talking about our Spring 54.3 cover, of course! Our Creative Non-fiction Contest Issue features Maciek Jasik’s “African Horned Melon” as our cover art and we couldn’t have dreamed of a better cover for this issue. It’s from the series The Secret Lives of Fruits and Vegetables, a project that Jasik says, “aims to reintroduce these mystical, invisible qualities to fruits and vegetables that have been lost amidst the clamor of nutritional statistics. Each offers its own indelible powers beyond our narrow habits of thought.”
The content of 54.3 is just as exciting as our cover! We have the winners of our 2016 creative Non-fiction Contest, the judge’s essay about the winners, and new works from both emerging and established writers.
If Prose Editor Christopher Evans’s interview with our 2016 Non-fiction Contest winner Danny Jacobs piqued your interest, you can check out the rest of the winning story when you get your subscription in the mail or buy one here! And be sure to keep reading on for Liza Porter’s “Reconstructing” (first runner-up) and Victoria Young’s “How to Give A Passive-Aggressive Handjob” (second runner-up).
If you’re looking for more weird and wonderful (note, we consider these two words practically synonymous), Tom Cho’s “Are You There, God? It Is I, Robot” will surely deliver. And if you’re at AWP(Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference) next weekend, be sure not to miss the two panels he appears in: “Coming of Age Queer” and “No Place Like Home: Setting in the Contemporary Short Story”. We’ll be there, so be sure to drop by!
We’ve got new fiction by Andrew F. Sullivan, who was named one of The Star’s “five up-and-coming writers of 2016”. Look for his debut novel, WASTE (Dzanc Books, 2016) in your local bookstore. CBC Canada Writers Fiction Long-lister Phedra Deonarine’s “San Fernando, Trinidad: School Year 1995-1996” is a must read and savour. Be sure to check out Danielle Burnette‘s flash fiction piece, “Not Her Husband”.
For poetry, we broke the record for most published poems by an author. Well, I don’t know that, but when you read Adèle Barclay’s six poems, you’ll understand why we had to have them all! Her debut collection of poetry, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach For You is forthcoming this fall with Nightwood Editions.
We also have three poems by Jacob McArthur Mooney from his book, Don’t Be Interesting (M&S, 2016), poems by Kirya Marchand and Julie Paul, and translation by Nathaniel G. Moore.
Be sure to check out the issue for yourself for all of these incredible pieces and more! And if you’re in the Los Angeles area next weekend, come check out our booth at AWP for prizes, issues, and more!
Word Vancouver September 25, 2015
PRISM international is producing Coast Poetics: Readings by Award Winning West Coast Poets, hosted by very own Executive Circulation Ed. JL Lori.
If you can’t catch Aislinn Hunter at her 12:40pm reading, you can see her again at Coastal Poetics with PRISM’s 2015 Poetry Contest first runner-up Jessie Jones (53.4) and Laura Matwichuk (53.4). Matwichuk’s poems have appeared in CV2, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, Riddle Fence, Vallum, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013. She was a finalist for the 2013 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.
PRISM international Spring Launch party – May 8, 2015
To celebrate our new issue release, Spring 2015, PRISM is throwing a launch party at Lost + Found Cafe, May 8th, 7pm. We’ll be celebrating with some pals – local lit mags, EVENT, Room, Poetry is Dead and subTerrain. It’s going to be a fun FREE evening of fiction and poetry, FREE food (including, of course, pizza) and FREE giveaways.
Our host for the night will be the magnificent Sierra Skye Gemma, and here’s our exciting lineup of readers:
Raoul Fernandes, whose brilliant poetry collection Transmitter and Receiver was recently released by Nightwood Editions. Raoul was a finalist for subTerrain‘s 2013 Lush Triumphant Literary Award for poetry, and his poem “After Hours at the Centre for Dialogue” was recently featured on their Line Break blog. We featured five of Raoul’s poems in Issue 53.1, and you can read one poem, “Suspension,” right here, just to get you in the mood.
Clara Kumagai, now former PRISM international editor. Having relocated from Co. Galway, Ireland, Clara is pursuing a MFA at UBC’s Creative Writing Program. Her short story “Waiting” was featured in Room 37.4. (Yes, this is me, talking in the third person…)
Jordan Abel, a former editor of PRISM international and winner of the 2014 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Jordan’s book of poetry, This Place of Scraps, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Jordan’s poem “Cartography” was recently published in Poetry is Dead #10.
Richard Kelly Kemick, whose short story “I Thought I’d Get More” appears in our Spring Issue 53.3. Richard’s first collection of poetry, Caribou Run, is forthcoming with Goose Lane Editions in 2016.
Russell Thornton, whose collection Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize AND the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. We published two of Russell’s poems in Issue 53.2, and EVENTpublished three of his poems in EVENT 42.3. Back in December we also posted an interview with him on our website. You can read that here if you’d like to get to know him better in advance.
Our (in)famous pizzapug cutout will also be appearing at the launch, so here’s your chance to get a pugshot! We’ll be giving away subscriptions to PRISM, EVENT, Room, Poetry is Dead and subTerrain AND some pizzapug t-shirts!
Did I mention it’s free?
So join us at Lost + Found Cafe, May 8th at 7pm! Here’s the Facebook event so you can click attending and invite your friends: PRISM Loves Local Lit Mags.
See you there!
AWP with Pizza Pug!
Us editors have been working hard to put the INTERNATIONAL into PRISM international. We were lucky enough to go all the way to Minneapolis for AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair), where we attended panels, met writers, editors and publishers and unveiled our Spring Issue 53:3… and #pizzapug.
AWP had big love for pizzapug. Lots of people were into the cover (literally) and tweeted some amazing pugshots to win some coveted t-shirts.
