What a Trio!
Starring Jenny Heijun Wills, Tessa Hulls & Teresa Wong
SUNDAY, OCT 20 @ 10AM $25
Memorial Park Library, Festival Hub, 2nd Floor
1221 2 St SW
Prepare to be visually wowed. And have your heart open three times bigger. After devouring their books, we had to give Jenny Heijun Wills (Everything and Nothing at All), Tessa Hulls (Feeding Ghosts), and Teresa Wong (All Our Ordinary Stories) the opportunity to share a stage. Though they each weave a unique tapestry in their work, across countries, cultures and genres, they write toward common threads of family, belonging, and community that are at the heart of what it means to be human. Heijun Wills’s book has been nominated for the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize, while graphic novelist Hulls is up for the 2024 Kirkus Prize. And Wong is Calgary’s comics treasure.
Festival favourite Kyo Maclear wrote this about Heijun Willis’s latest, but she could easily be referring to all three books: “What does a book look like when it subverts narrow stories of kinship and ancestry, when it refuses to pander or be pinned down and possessed, when it upends crushing dichotomies, fixed definitions, forced choices? It looks like this. Defiantly wise. Unbeautifully beautiful. Capaciously loving. Mutinous.”
WHAT TO EXPECT
- 75-minute hosted conversation with visuals
- Complimentary coffee and tea by Barrow Coffee Roasters
- Onsite Bookseller: Owl’s Nest Books
- Post-Show signing and author selfies
ABOUT HOST PAM ROCKER
Pam Rocker (she/her) is an American/Canadian, Certified DEIB Specialist, consultant, performer, and writer. From Pride to politics, she has done everything from front a queer feminist ukulele comedy band to advocate for legislation against conversion therapy. She is the playwright of ‘heterophobia’, which also inspired the music video “Don’t Ever Look Back” by Canadian band Shred Kelly. Rocker was chosen as one of the Top 40 Under 40 in Calgary, and as one of the top 30 activists in Canada. She is the former board Chair of Affirm United/S’affirmer Ensemble and Broadview Magazine and serves as a consultant on the National Coalition to End Conversion Practices. She is a frequent instructor at the amazing YouthWrite Alberta, the Director of Affirming Connections (a queer/faith non-profit), and consults all over North America.
