A Minor Chorus: An Evening with Billy-Ray Belcourt
Friday, September 16 / 6:30pm
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
149 West Hastings Street
Join Massy Books, SFU Public Square, SFU Library, Massy Arts Society, SFU Galleries and Penguin Random House for an evening with daring literary talent Billy-Ray Belcourt and the launch of his latest book, A Minor Chorus. An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside, Belcourt will do a reading—introducing characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest—and Q&A, moderated by award-winning author Cecily Nicholson.
Hosted at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, this event is free, with the option to purchase a copy of A Minor Chorus upon registration. A book signing and reception will take place following the event.
In-person. Mask-wearing required.
Register here
A Minor Chorus
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he’s meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He lives in Vancouver, where he is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at UBC. His books are This Wound Is A World, NDN Coping Mechanisms, A History Of My Brief Body, and A Minor Chorus.
Cecily Nicholson is the author of four books, and past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. She teaches at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and collaborates with community impacted by carcerality and food insecurity.
