Co-hosted with the Malahat Review, five Humanities poets find new light in dark times through the written word.

Poets

Saba Pakdel
Saba Pakdel is an Iranian poet, modernist scholar, and PhD student in the English department at University of Victoria. She specializes in migration studies and contemporary literature with a focus on exile, refugee, and immigration problems, particularly in works of migrant authors from the Global South. In May 2022, Saba published her chapbook In-Between by above / ground press. Website: www.sabapakdel.com

Hanna Protasova
Hanna Protasova is a Ukrainian poet who writes in Russian and has received literary prizes in Ukraine, Belgium and Germany. Born in Kharkiv and living in Kyiv since 2002, her first publications appeared in Kharkiv literary almanacs “Levada” and “Slobozhanshchyna” in the early 2000s. In 2020, she published a book of poetry “Poka ne pogasyat svet” (“Until the Lights are off”).

Neil Surkan
Neil Surkan is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Unbecoming (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), which was selected as one of three finalists for the City of Calgary’s W.O. Mitchell Award, and On High (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018). He has also published two chapbooks – Their Queer Tenderness (Knife-Fork-Book, 2020) and Super, Natural (Anstruther Press, 2017). Neil currently lives and teaches in Nanaimo, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, with Luca, Edi, and Lloyd. Website: www.neilsurkan.com

Leslie Joy Ahenda
Leslie Joy Ahenda is a poet and editor. Educated at the University of Victoria, she holds an MFA from the University of Guelph. She is the author of two chapbooks, Threnody for a Drowned Girl and The Republic of Home, and she works on the editorial board at House of Anansi Press.

Annick MacAskill
Annick MacAskill is the author of No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), which was longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award, Murmurations (Gaspereau Press, 2020), and Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), which won of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in journals across Canada and abroad and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology series. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq.

Where?

Zoom

Accessibility

Sign language interpretation (ASL) will be available for this event (request must be made 72 hours before event start time).

When?

Thursday, 9 February @ 6:30pm - 8:30pm.

Hosts

Iain Higgins, Editor, Malahat Review and Professor, English
Philip Cox, Communications Officer, Humanities