Welcome to Historic Joy Kogawa House

The Historic Joy Kogawa House was purchased by TLC The Land Conservancy in May 2006 after a successful public fundraising campaign to save this literary landmark from demolition. The property is one of the few residences in Vancouver identified as having been confiscated by the Canadian government during the Second World War and sold without the lawful owner's permission. In addition, the property has heritage and cultural significance for its connection with renowned Canadian author Joy Kogawa (born 1935), who lived in the house with her family between 1937 and 1942 when the family was forced to move. Kogawa's work has been nationally and internationally recognized. The property is in the process of being preserved as a Canadian cultural and literary landmark and functions as a Writers-in-Residence retreat and hosts periodic special events.

Currently, between times when the Writers-in-Residence program is on hiatus, TLC The Land Conservancy needs a warden to live in the residence and assist in minor maintenance.

The warden will have use of the fully furnished home, including a living room, office, dining area, full bathroom, full kitchen, one bedroom, multipurpose room, ample storage space, outdoor deck, and small yard. Washer and dryer are included.

In return for a very reasonable rent and utilities, the warden will be expected to assist with minor maintenance duties of the site. These would mostly include yard work, but can vary depending on skill and interest. Also, the warden would need to accommodate the use of the house for approximately two or three events or tours a month, as well as visits from TLC and others to perform maintenance and restoration activities. These events or tours can be either private or open to the public. The warden is expected to keep the inside of the house tidy before scheduled events or tours. The warden will be given sufficient notice to prepare for these activities.

Rent: Lower than market rent. Additionally, rent will be further reduced if restoration (i.e., construction) is occurring at the house. Some work will occur during the summer of 2012.

Must be a mature, responsible adult. No pets, no smokers and no children.
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Available for April 15, 2012 until March 31, 2013. To apply, contact Tamsin Baker at (604) 733-2313 or email tbaker@conservancy.bc.ca.

Please save the evening of Saturday, April 14, for a gala celebration of Deborah Willis, as she closes out her 2012 author residency at the house. She will read from new short stories written while living at the house since January, and she will introduce some of the writers she met while living here, including Aaron Golbeck of Downtown Eastside Studio Society, with whom Debbie has been working Wednesday afternoons to encourage sex workers and former sex workers to write about their experiences.

This event takes place 7 to 10pm at Historic Joy Kogawa House. Admission by donation. Space is limited. To reserve a seat, please RSVP kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.

John Asfour, our 2009 writer-in-residence, will also attend. He’s in town from April 11 to 18 to launch V6A, a collection of stories and poems from the Thursdays Writing Collective at the Carnegie Centre. He and Elee Kraalji Gardiner and Arsenal Pulp Press will launch that book at the Waldorf Hotel on Thursday, April 12, at 7pm. Then John will read from his book of poems, Blindness, at Historic Joy Kogawa House on Tuesday, April 17. Blindness includes poems John wrote while living at the house. They have since been published by McGill-Queens University Press, and earlier this year, the book was selected for a design award by the Association of American University Presses.

Deborah Willis will also read as part of the Kranky Reading Series, Thursday, April 6, at 7pm, at the Kranky Cafe, 228 East 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 1G5.

Historic Joy Kogawa House
1450 West 64th Avenue
Vancouver, B.C. V6P 2N4
Email: kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Deborah Willis, writer-in-residence, and 14 teen writers will launch a chapbook of writing on Sunday, March 25, from 3pm to 5pm, at Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver.

Friends, family, and interested others are invited to hear poems, short fiction, and creative non-fiction readings from the chapbook, and of course we'll have food and refreshments.

To reserve a seat, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

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Romance is in the air at Historic Joy Kogawa House. Come celebrate Valentine’s Day with love poems, chocolate and vino, and help launch Leaf Press’s anthology The Wild Weathers with readings from Peter Trower, Daniela Elza, Susan McCaslin, Elsie Neufeld, Berenice Freedome, Jocelyn Pitsch, Meg Torwl, Leanne Dunic, Lenore Rowntree, and Robin Susanto. Kogawa House writer-in-residence, Deborah Willis, will attend.

When: 3 to 5 pm, Sunday, February 12

Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House is located at 1450 West 64th Avenue (2 blocks east of Granville)

Cost: Tickets are $15 at the door and include a glass of the best vino and all the chocolate in the house>

Please rsvp to kogawahouse@yahoo.ca. See you there!

Historic Joy Kogawa House brings writing into the community

Historic Joy Kogawa House proudly announces Victoria author Deborah Willis as our 2012 writer-in-residence.

Deborah Willis was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Her short fiction has appeared in Grain, Event, Prism International, and The Walrus. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2009, and was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in British Columbia and the Governor General’s Award. Willis resides in Victoria, B.C., but will live and work at Historic Joy Kogawa House from January 15 to April 15, 2012.

“I’m so pleased to have the chance to live in the Joy Kogawa House,” says Willis, who will work on her second collection of stories during her residency. The mandate of the house states that writers-in-residence will spend sixty percent of their time writing and forty percent on community outreach. “The personal, private work of writing is balanced by time spent on community programs. It’s a wonderful way for me to experience living in Vancouver.”

Willis will work with three community groups, offering a four-week writing program for teens from local high schools, a reading program for newcomers to Canada in partnership with the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Centre, and co-facilitating writing workshops for sex workers and former sex workers in partnership with Aaron Golbeck of Downtown Eastside Studio Society. She will also run a writing workshop for children, with Sarah Maitland, in the KidSafe Writers’ Room at Queen Alexandra Elementary School.

Willis will take writing into the community in a public program that creates new audiences for Canadian literature and encourages new writers to contribute their stories to our literary canon.

To interview Deborah Willis about her work and about living and working at Historic Joy Kogawa House, to volunteer to assist with these community programs, and for further information, please visit www.kogawahouse.com.

We acknowledge the Canada Council and the B.C. Arts Council for their financial support of this project.

Note to Editors:

1. Information on Historic Joy Kogawa House

Historic Joy Kogawa House is the former home of the Canadian author Joy Kogawa (born 1935). It stands as a cultural and historical reminder of the expropriation of property that all Canadians of Japanese descent experienced after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The Historic Joy Kogawa House writer-in-residence program brings well-regarded professional writers in touch with a local community of writers, readers, editors, publishers, booksellers, and librarians. While in residence, the writer works to enrich the literary community around him or her and to foster an appreciation for Canadian writing through programs that involve students, other established and emerging writers and members of the general public.

Since 2009, as a partner with TLC, the Historic Joy Kogawa Society has hosted four writers to live and work in the house on a paid basis. Funding is provided through the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, and through donations from the general public.

Contact:

Kogawa House Society: Ann-Marie Metten / kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

2. Information about the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society

The TCCS provides settlement services hoping to help newcomers enjoy a smooth transition to Canada and plays an important role in promoting mutual understanding and cultural harmony between Taiwanese and other ethnic groups in Canada.

Contact:

Kogawa House Society: Cecilia Chueh / cecilia@tccs.ca

3. Information about Downtown Eastside Studio Society

Downtown Eastside Studio Society is a non-profit arts workshop and publishing house in Vancouver. We provide support for people facing social barriers such as mental illness, addictions, and homelessness to undertake creative writing projects and publish their work into books.

Contact:

Downtown Eastside Studio Society: Aaron Golbeck / info@studiosociety.ca

4. Information on the KidSafe Writers’ Room

In partnership with the Vancouver School Board’s Community School Team and the York House School, the KidSafe Writers’ Room offers an after-school tutoring program for students in grades 1 through 7. Writers’ Room tutors also help with KidSafe’s school-break literacy programming. When a child is given the opportunity to work one-on-one with a tutor, he or she can complete projects to the best of his or her ability, and boost literacy skills and self-esteem.

Contact:

KidSafe Writers’ Room: Sarah Maitland / writersroom@kidsafe.ca

Wednesday, December 7, 7:00 p.m.

Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level
Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street
Admission is free. Seating is limited.

To commemorate the 140th anniversary of Emily Carr’s birth on December 13, please join author Susan Crean for commentary on and a screening of Winds of Heaven: Emily Carr, Carvers, and the Spirits of the Forest by Michael Ostroff. This impressionistic film explores the spirit that informed the solitary life of one of Canada’s most celebrated painters. Emily Carr began painting in an era when women didn’t paint, travelling to remote locations that few professional adventurers chose to go. Not only did she adopt the painting techniques of modernism, when such ideas were considered dangerous, Carr chronicled the extraordinary art and culture of native peoples, who were invisible the dominant culture. The film runs 87 minutes.

Salon Sundays are a treat, largely because of a willing audience. Each week a different dynamic; each time a little bit of magic.

There are Sundays left. I look forward to seeing you.

December 4th — Shirley Bear
2pm – 4pm
Shirley Bear returns to Vancouver to read from her 2006 collection Virgin Bones – Belayak Kcikug’nas’ikn’ug at Kogawa House. A visual artist, writer, and activist, she was honored last week at Rideau Hall with the Order of Canada.

December 11th – Open House
1pm – 5pm
Please come to visit Kogawa House for a celebration of the people who created it and keep it running. Can I ask you to bring along something hand-made and simple like a jar of jam, a sheaf of paper, a holiday ornament? We’ll have a craft table with proceeds going to the House.

Place: 1450 West 64th Avenue, east of Granville
To reserve a seat, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Other Kogawa House Events
Special Screening of Winds of Heaven
Emily Carr was born 140 years ago in Victoria this December 13th. Susan Crean will host a screening of Michael Ostroff’s documentary film that was featured at the Vancouver International Film Festival last year. It was based on my book, The Laughing One. And similarly explores Carr’s legacy and First Nations’ history. John Walker was cinematographer, Peter Raymont, producer with Michael Ostroff.

Time: Wednesday, December 7th, 7:00pm
Place: VPL Central Library, Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level

Grey Cup Sunday overshadowed our plans to host Wayde Compton at Historic Joy Kogawa House on Sunday, November 27. Wayde will spend an afternoon with us at some later date. Thanks for your interest.

Join writer-in-residence Susan Crean for her conversation with Shirley Bear, activist, visual artist, and elder of the Maliseet First Nation. Shirley Bear’s writing includes an essay in the third volume of the anthology of writing from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission edited by Ashok Mathur. Two additional pieces are considered essential statements on her art and spiritual philosophy. The first is the opening piece in her book Virgin Bones (2006). The second is her curatorial statement accompanying the exhibition Changers: A Spiritual Renaissance (1989). In November 2011, Shirley Bear was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada. She lives on the Tobique Reserve (Negootkook) in New Brunswick.

“Artists are the movers and changers of the world. They have always been revolutionaries, creating change in thought and style within their societies.”
—Shirley Bear, Changers: A Spiritual Renaissance, Curatorial Statement

Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

Sunday, December 4, 2 to 4pm

Admission by donation.
Space is limited. To reserve a seat, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Also, if you plan to attend, please find us on Facebook and Like this event.