About this Event
Join LitFest in celebrating the book launch of Nisha Patel’s For the Record and Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon’s 姚君妍 Duckweed 浮萍, together!
For the Record is a book-length poem whose word count is set to the number of lives lost to COVID-19 in Alberta, the author's home province—which as of January 2026 sits at 7,113 people. Told in two parts, with each section recording real-time headlines, the book begins with the first COVID-related death of Cargill meat factory worker Hiep Bui. But the poem that cannot truly end does try to end with the hope embodied in the birth of Nisha Patel's first nephew, weaving the overlapping narratives of life in precarious, unprecedented times with the bracketing of political negligence, Formula 1 racing, and gig work as an artist.
浮萍 Duckweed gets it’s title from a Chinese proverb describing wanderers, a life with little or no roots. The poems in this collection evoke the process of wayfinding: orienting, choosing a path, navigating, and arrival. They act as signposts through landscapes of time and space as the poet works to locate herself in language, race, gender, place, culture, migration, and a collective and family history. These poems wander between English and Cantonese. They wander between the personal, the historical, the systemic; between Hong Kong and Alberta, between Edmonton’s and Vancouver’s Chinatowns; between the kitchens of mother, grandmother, and self. And in wandering, the poet arrives at her place among lost, or loose, ties to cultural identity and grandmother tongues. Evocative, tender, fiery and soft, space-and-time-travelling work
Event venue & nearby stays
Edmonton Public Library - Stanley A. Milner Library (Downtown) - Muttart Theatre, 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square, Edmonton, Canada
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.