Vancouver launch of The Sacred Heart Motel

“One of the sheer brilliances of Kwan’s book is turning migration into a love poem and love into a migration. Don’t even try to separate the political from the personal; there are too many transient rooms in the heart, unregistered hearts in any given room. And, of course, there’s the border – of desire, home, identity – where all the action happens: ‘the convergence of lives, motivations / riding shotgun,’ as Kwan puts it, or rather wrenches it from our very hearts.”

—Carlos A. Pittella, recipient of a Frontier 2022 Global Poetry Prize

Join Grace Kwan for their hometown launch of THE SACRED HEART MOTEL, hosted at the City Centre Artist Lodge (The Well Studios – Unit 27) in Mount Pleasant.

Featuring special guests Kyla Jamieson and Clio Lake

Food! Drinks! Readings! Heart-shaped key chains!

Access info: This is a free event. There is one flight of stairs with a handrail to access the venue. There is one all-genders washroom. Neither the event space nor the washroom is wheelchair-accessible. Doors and windows will be propped open to increase air flow, and there will also be fans on site. There is ample seating in the venue. Please wear a mask when you’re not eating or drinking. Masks will be available on site.

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In poet Grace Kwan’s debut, they are ruthless and nimble, guiding us through the recesses of body and roadside space. The reader tours the motel through this multiverse narrative, from amenities to rooms to back alleys, through the generations of ghosts and queer love stories, until they are left alone with the heart at the centre. The Sacred Heart Motel is a disorienting, startling collection about placelessness and longing.

Kyla Jamieson (she/her) is the author of Body Count (Nightwood Editions, 2020), which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, named a CBC Best Poetry Book of 2020, and awarded third place in the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors by CA Conrad and Anne Boyer. Kyla currently lives and relies on the traditional unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, where she dreams of systemic change, care-full futures, and disabled joy. Find her online or in the water.

Grace Kwan is a Malaysian-born sociologist and writer based in “Vancouver,” the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Their recent poetry appears in Canthius, Room Magazine, and others. Find them at https://grckwn.wordpress.com/.

Clio Lake is mixed, trans, and gnc, living as a settler on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlil̓wətaʔɬ territories. They like bosc pears, pomegranates, and being in the water. You can find her writing collected by Publication Studio Vancouver, BiteZine N°2, and in ___figuration: an anthology of trans writers, forthcoming from Gnashing Teeth. She is a recipient of accolade for drama from the UC Writing Awards.