Oana Avasilichioaei’s Abandon – Book Launch

Tuesday, May 23 – 7:30 pm
Pages Books on Kensington
1135 Kensington Rd NW

Hosted by Richard Harrison and accompanied by poets Weyman Chan and Art Joyce, Oana Avasilichioaei reads from her debut poetry collection, Abandon, this Tuesday.

Abandon is filled with the richness of a country’s history; it melds the legends of Romania with its modern reality in Avasilichioaei’s vivid and insightful poetry. Dragons rub shoulders with bad-toothed mountaineers. Women wash carpets in the river, and builders wall women into monasteries. This rich collection heralds a promising new voice in Canadian poetry.

CONTACT: Mark Hopkins
710.0093 – mark.c.hopkins@gmail.com



The Poets

Oana Avasilichioaei was born in Romania and has lived in Canada since 1987. She is the author of three chapbooks: Occupational Sickness (2000 – translations of Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu), The Dictator’s Garden (2003) and Close Your Eyes (2005). She lives in Montreal, where she is a freelance editor and translator, and a teacher of English and Creative Writing at Dawson College. Abandon is her first book.

Weyman Chan is the author of Before a Blue Sky Moon (Frontenac House, 2002), which received the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry in 2003. Chan lives and works in Calgary with his wife and two daughters. His poems and stories have been published in several Alberta journals and anthologies over the past 15 years. His poetry also appears in Many-Mouthed Birds: Contemporary Writing by Chinese-Canadians.

Art Joyce has been an organizer of poetry tours and cafes, and a frequent performer on the Kootenay scene, since the 1980s. His poems and essays have been published in various Canadian literary magazines and in 2000 he produced and directed a poetry video, The Muse: chameleon fire, with funding from Bravo!TV. Under his imprint, Chameleon Fire Editions, Joyce has published numerous collections of poetry, including such poets as Chad Norman, Catherine Owen and Margaret Hornby. He has worked as an editor with Horsefly Magazine, published through the Nelson Fine Arts Centre.