Join Word Vancouver and the LiterASIAN Festival for an afternoon of food and festivities! This fundraiser will include dim sum, wine tastings, author readings, and live and silent auctions. All event proceeds go to supporting this year’s Word Vancouver literary festival in September. Tickets are $75, and discounted at $70 each when purchasing 8 (a full table).

Doors open at 12:30PM.

Hosted by: JJ Lee

Featured Authors: Joy Kogawa, Lindsay Wong, Ujjal Dosanjh, Keiko Honda, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio, and Angie Wong.

See all biographies below.

JJ Lee

JJ Lee wrote the memoir The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit. He teaches creative nonfiction at The Writer's Studio, Simon Fraser University. His essays and features have appeared in ELLE Canada, ELLE Man, Flare, Fashion, Montecristo, and Nuvo magazines. He lives in New Westminster.

Joy kogawa

Joy Kogawa was born Joy Nozomi Nakayama on June 6, 1935, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to first-generation Japanese Canadians Lois Yao Nakayama and Gordon Goichi Nakayama. She grew up in a predominantly white, middle-class community. During World War II, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and twelve weeks later Kogawa was sent with her family to the internment camp for Japanese Canadians at Slocan during World War II. After the war she resettled with her family in Coaldale, Alberta, where she completed high school. Kogawa's published first as a poet, beginning in 1968 with The Splintered Moon. She began to work as a staff writer for the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa in 1974. In 1981 she published her first prose work: Obasan, a semi-autobiographical novel that has become her best-known work. Kogawa adapted the book for children as Naomi's Road in 1985. A sequel, Itsuka (1992), was rewritten and retitled Emily Kato (2005), and then republished as Itsuka (2018). Obasan has been named as one of the most important books in Canadian history by the Literary Review of Canada and was also listed by The Toronto Star in a "Best of Canada" feature. Obasan was later adapted into a children's book, Naomi's Road (1986), which, in turn, Vancouver Opera adapted into a 45-minute opera that toured elementary schools throughout British Columbia. Although the novel Obasan describes Japanese Canadian experiences, it is routinely taught in Asian American literature courses in the United States, due to its successful "integration of political understanding and literary artistry" and "its authentication of a pan-Asian sensibility." Kogawa now lives mainly in Toronto, Ontario, but at one time divided her time between Vancouver and Toronto and was the 2012–13 Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto.

LINDSAY WONG

Lindsay Wong is the author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning, and bestselling memoir The Woo-Woo, which was a finalist for Canada Reads 2019. She has written a YA novel entitled My Summer of Love and Misfortune. Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality (Penguin Canada 2023) is her debut short story collection for adults. Wong holds a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Winnipeg, and divides her time between the prairies and the west coast. Follow her on X @LindsayMWong, Instagram @Lindsaywong.M, or visit www.lindsaywongwriter.com.

ujjal dosanjh

Born in a village of India’s rural Punjab in 1946, mere months before the midnight of India’s independence in 1947, Ujjal Dosanjh migrated to Britain in 1964 where he shunted trains in the British Rail goods yard in Derby, made crayons in a Bedford factory, worked in a car parts plant in Letchworth and helped edit a Punjabi weekly in London while immersed in reading and learning to speak English listening to BBC One. In search for better opportunities he immigrated to Canada in 1968 and began working in a saw mill pulling lumber off the green chain while attending night school. A serious back injury ensured his speedier return to Langara which helped him earn a B.A. (SFU) and LLB (UBC). A lifelong activist for social and economic justice, Ujjal campaigned for better legal rights for farm and domestic workers, practiced law and jumped into electoral politics becoming a BC MLA, Attorney General and Premier and subsequently a member of parliament and Minister of Health for Canada. Retiring in 2011, he wrote his autobiography Journey After Midnight published in 2016-it made BC’s Best seller list for several weeks—before turning to fiction to write stories that he had encountered in his life some of which had travelled with him. Living in Vancouver since 1968, all his Canadian life, he enjoys gardening, walking, writing and spending time with his six grandchildren. Ujjal’s debut novel, The Past Is Never Dead, set in Banjhan, Punjab and in Bedford, England in the British Midlands of the mid-20th century, published by Speaking Tiger in India, delves into the life of an untouchable Punjabi lad who immigrates to England and how the stranglehold of the caste system travels and remains with him as he fights for equality in Britain.

keiko honda

Keiko Honda is a scientist, writer, community organizer and painter. She holds a PhD in international community health from New York University, but when she suddenly contracted a rare autoimmune disease that confined her to a wheelchair for life, she had to leave her career in research at Columbia University in New York. After moving to Vancouver in 2009, Keiko started hosting artist salons, for which she was awarded the City of Vancouver’s Remarkable Women award in 2014. Shortly thereafter, she founded the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society to bridge generations and cultures through the arts and to offer members of marginalized communities in Vancouver opportunities for artistic self-discovery. She teaches the aesthetics of co-creation in the Liberal Arts and 55+ Program at Simon Fraser University. She lives in Vancouver, BC, and enjoys watercolour painting and hosting her salons.

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio

After working in school boards as a settlement worker, public speaker, and researcher, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio founded Filipino Talks-- a program that builds bridges between educators and Filipino families. Her work with newcomers inspired her debut novel, Reuniting with Strangers (Douglas & McIntyre), which was longlisted for Canada Reads 2024, named one of CBC's Best Books of 2023, and was a finalist for the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. Her stories have been published in Geist, Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing (Cormorant Books), Changing the Face of Canadian Literature (Guernica Editions), TAYO Literary Magazine, and more. Born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, she is now based in Toronto.

Angie Wong

Angie Wong is a second-generation Chinese person born in Canada. She is a first-generation scholar of the Humanities, teaching across the interdisciplinary fields of Settler Colonial, Social Justice, Gender, and Postcolonial Studies. Angie is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary, and full-time senior consultant on Indigenous Health innovation and research with Alberta’s provincial healthcare system.