Clint Burnham, Aaron Peck and Rishma Dunlop Read on November 12

Play Chthonics: Contemporary Canadian Readings presents

Clint Burnham, Aaron Peck and Rishma Dunlop
Wednesday November 12, 2008
Green College, Graham House 7:30 pm

Clint Burnham's Rental Van is "populated with tangled, pop-littered phrases, a work that is constantly challenging its readers" (Danforth Review)
"a very complex blend of avant garde technique, colloquial vulgarity, and political outrage" (Think Again).


Aaron Peck's first novel: "Bernard Willis was an archivist at work in a residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts when he mysteriously disappeared. Two unnamed people, lovers, find Willis's manuscript-in-progress and decide to prepare it for publication."


The Toronto Star says about Rishma Dunlop: "Her phrasing can spur leaps of the heart; she's a writer whose passion and large-spiritedness are inspiring." Dunlop "seduc[es] us with a relentless passion for the intangible beauty wrought visible in objects cathected with reverence and desire." - West Coast Line





Clint Burnham's most recent book of poems is Rental Van (Anvil, 2007). He is the author of several other books including the novel Smoke Show (Arsenal Pulp, 2005, shortlisted for the BC Book Prize), Airborne Photo (Anvil, 1999) and The Jamesonian Unconscious (Duke UP, 1995). Burnham taught at UBC from 1996-2002 and currently teaches in Simon Fraser University's English Department and is a freelance art critic for the Vancouver Sun.

Aaron Peck's first novel is The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis (Pedlar Press, 2008). He is also the author of a chapbook, Crepuscule on Mission Street (Nomados, 2006) and of numerous reviews and articles (most recently in Fillip and Canadian Art). He is the co-editor of Doppelganger, an online journal of critical writing on visual art and literature, and has served on the board of directors at Artspeak. Peck holds an MA in English from York University and currently lives in Vancouver.

Rishma Dunlop is an award winning Canadian poet, playwright, essayist, and fiction writer. Her books of poetry are: White Album (Inanna Publications 2008), Metropolis (Mansfield Press, 2005), Reading Like a Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004), and The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002). She received the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003, and her radio drama, "The Raj Kumari's Lullaby," was produced by CBC Radio in 2005. She is a professor in the Department of English at York University, Toronto, where she is Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program. She is founding editor of the international poetry journal Studio.

Play Chthonics reading series showcases innovative poetry, narrative, and cross-genre writing. We encourage creative, interdisciplinary conversations among writers, students, faculty, theorists, and community members in Vancouver. The series is based in the English Department at UBC, and is in the midst of a six-reading season for 2008-9.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Institute for Canadian Studies at UBC, the Department of English at UBC and Green College.