On Saturday, Feb 11, The Land Conservancy of BC along with the Save Kogawa House Committee hosted an up-close and personal reading & book signing with award-winning Canadian author and poet, Joy Kogawa.

Kogawa read from her second novel Emily Kato (formerly Itsuka).

Other guest authors included Roy Miki, Governor General Award Winner for Poetry, reading from Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (published by Raincoast) and Daphne Marlatt, Vancouver poet, novelist and oral historian, reading from Steveston. Retired school teacher and counsellor, Ellen Crowe-Swords also spoke to her family’s past experience of being interned at Hastings Park.

Thanks to all who attended the event.

This event was part of TLC’s awareness and fundraising campaign to save Joy Kogawa’s childhood home in Vancouver as a historic symbol, helping to educate the public about the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. For more information or to donate, call (604) 733-2313 or visit www.conservancy.bc.ca.

(photos courtesy of Derek Moscato)