HAPA-PALOOZA 2013 EVENTS
Wednesday September 18
Mixed Voices Raised
Presenting the hottest BC literary talent discussing hybridity, identity and creativity!
Join Canadian Poet Laureate Fred Wah, 2009 Journey Prize winner Yasuko Thanh, and critically-acclaimed author David Chariandy in discussion with UBC English professor Glenn Deer exploring their mixed cultural upbringing and its influence on their creative work.
Location: Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, Alice MacKay Room
Time: 7pm-8:30pm
Free Event
Thursday September 19
Mixed Flicks
Directors! Actors! Screenings! Premieres!
Curated by Jeff Chiba Stearns, hosted by YouTube personality Tetsuro Shigematsu, join us as we explore the latest media featuring multi-ethnic subjects and casts. The evening also includes a discussion panel with actors and filmmakers of mixed ancestry. Actors in attendance include Kyle Toy, Michelle Kim and Brett Hirose. Featuring the Canadian Premiere of Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s documentary on third culture kids, Neither Here Nor There, and the narrative short film Kimchi Fried Dumplings by Jason Karman.
Location: Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, Alice MacKay Room
Time: 7pm-8:30pm
Free Event
Saturday September 21
Hapa Family Day in the Park
Face-painting, family crafts, music and magic!
Join us for this day of family fun! Bring down a blanket and picnic and meet the other beautiful families of mixed-identity in your community.
MCed by Toddish McWong, Gung Haggis Fat Choy
1:30-2:30 - Roaming magic by Travis Bernhadt
1:30-3:00 - Face-painting by Marie-Helen Babin
1:30-3:30 - Ultimate balloons by Michael Ouchi
2:30-3:30 - Polynesian dance demo and hula workshop by
The Kauhane School of Polynesian Dance
1:00-4:00 - Family Tree Crafts, Conversation, laughter, connection!
Location: Granville Island Picnic Area (covered area next to the waterpark and playground)
Time: 1pm-4pm
Rain or Shine!
Free Event
Artist Bios
Mixed Voices
(moderated by Glenn Deer)
Fred Wah is Canada’s current poet laureate. His biofiction,Diamond Grill, about hybridity and growing up in a small-town Chinese-Canadian café, is one of his best-known books but he has also published over 20 collections of poetry. His most recent poetic investigation of the hyphen, is a door, was awarded the 2010 Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize. His book of prose-poems,Waiting For Saskatchewan, received the Governor-General’s Award in 1986 and Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity (2000) was awarded the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Writing on Canadian literature. He was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan but grew up in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. He studied music and English literature at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960?s where he was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter TISH. After graduate work in literature and linguistics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the State University of New York at Buffalo, he returned to the Kootenays in the late 1960s, where he taught at Selkirk College and was the founding coordinator of the writing program at David Thompson University Centre. After teaching poetry and poetics at the University of Calgary for many years, he now lives in Vancouver.
Yasuko Thanh is the winner of the 2009 Journey Prize. Her short story collection Floating like the Dead (M&S, 2012) was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson BC Book Prize, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and was chosen as a Quill & Quire Best Books of 2012. She’s been nominated for two Western Magazine Awards and a CBC Literary Award. She holds an MFA from UVic. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Victoria, British Columbia.
David Chariandy was born and raised in Toronto, the son of working-class Caribbean immigrants. Soucouyant, his first novel, was nominated for the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (longlisted), the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize (longlisted), the 2007 Governor General’s Award for Fiction (finalist), the 2007 ForeWord Book of the Year Award for literary fiction from an independent press (“gold” winner), the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book of Canada and the Caribbean (shortlisted), the 2008 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize of the British Columbia Book Prizes (shortlisted), the 2008 City of Toronto Book Award (shortlisted), the 2008 “One Book, One Vancouver” of the Vancouver Public Library (shortlisted), the 2008 Relit Award for best novel from a Canadian independent press (shortlisted), and the 2007 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award (shortlisted). He lives in Vancouver and teaches in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University.
Glenn Deer is an English professor at the University of British Columbia. He completed his B.A. (Honours) at the University of Alberta and his M.A. and Ph.D. at York University, Toronto. After completing his Ph.D. at York in 1987, he joined the English Department at the University of British Columbia to teach in the areas of rhetoric and Canadian Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press published his study of ideology and discourse in Canadian fiction in 1994, Postmodern Canadian Fiction and the Rhetoric of Authority. Deer’s recent teaching and research interests include the politics of historiography in Michael Ondaatje, comparative studies of Asian American and Asian Canadian writing, mixed-race writing and trans-ethnic desire, the representations of food in trans-cultural writing, and the discourses of the nuclear.
MIXED FLICKS
(moderated by Tetsuro Shigematsu)
Michelle Kim is a multiethnic, multidisciplinary storyteller based out of Vancouver. She began her career as a journalist, working for various media outlets, including the BBC in London and The Korea Herald in Seoul. Inspired by her family of film actors in South Korea, Michelle returned to Vancouver to pursue a career in the film industry. Michelle has acted in and produced various short and feature length films, including The Goodbye Girl (winner, The National Screen Institute’s Drama Prize 2012), Lost Lagoon (winner, Outstanding Canadian Feature at the Reel World Film Festival 2013), and Cinemanovels (official selection, Toronto International Film Festival 2013). Michelle has recently ventured into directing–having written, co-directed, and starred in the feature film, The Tree Inside.
Brent Hirose is a recent transplant from Winnipeg, where he spent the better part of the last decade working as an actor, playwright, director, improviser and more. There he became a founding member of Theatre by the River and the improv group The Horrible Friends as well as a member of the fledgling Winnipeg alt-comedy scene. He has toured his award winning one-man plays around the country as well as lending his voice to a multitude of cartoons including Noonbory and the Super Seven and Kung Fu Dino Posse. Most recently he has become a member of the Instant Theatre company as well as directing the fringe show 21st Century Tricksters. Check out his projects atwww.brenthirose.com
Kyle Toy is a multi-faceted and versatile performer, working in the worlds of film acting, theater, and dance. He has acted in films such as the Sony Pictures feature “Center Stage: Turn it Up” and the Insight films feature “Personal Effects” with Ashton Kutcher & Michelle Pfieffer. Toy has also starred in several independent films and worked with theatre companies in his home of Vancouver, all while maintaining a steady schedule of guest roles with dance companies throughout Canada.
As a choreographer Toy has worked for many productions in Vancouver, Canada. In the world of film, he co-choreographed on the Sony Pictures feature “Center Stage: Turn It Up”, choreographing for Kenny Wormald (“Footloose”), Ethan Stiefel (“Center Stage”) & Cody Green (“Step It Up and Dance”). Toy is currently collaborating with film-makers and choreographers and starring in a nation-wide touring Michael Jackson Tribute show “Thriller is Back” which has garnered international attention and acclaim.
Jason Karman is a world-renowned director and writer, and has served on the jury at the BC Arts Council. His award-winning films have screened in the Americas, Europe and Asia. His drama, I’m in the Mood for Love, won the Gerry Brunet Memorial Award at the 2011 Vancouver Queer Film Festival. Jason is an active member of the local queer arts community.
Tetsuro Shigematsu Called the “the voice of our Azn generation” by Ricepaper magazine, Tetsuro was the first person-of-color to host a daily national radio program in Canada for CBC Radio. A former writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Tetsuro now writes for The Huffington Post. Tetsuro can be seen on Spike TV’s reality program The Deadliest Warrior, where he talks smack and kills Vikings. Currently a PhD student/Vanier Scholar at The University of British Columbia, Tetsuro is also president of the Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre. Follow him at @tweetsuro.
HAPA IN THE PARK
Travis Bernhadt Vancouver born and raised, magician Travis Bernhardt is known for his one man theatre show, Things That Never Happen (a runner-up for the Pick of the Fringe award at the 2010 Vancouver Fringe Festival), and for his stage work with Vancouver’s premier burlesque troupe, the Screaming Chickens Theatrical Society. He produces the Cabaret of Wonders, a neo-vaudevillian variety show and is one of Canada’s top street magicians.
The Kauhane School of Polynesian Dance Since its inception in 1999, Halau Hula Ka’Uhane O Ka Pakipika has grown to nearly 150 haumana (students), ranging in age from 2.5 years to 70+, and is the largest Polynesian dance school in Canada. The school is the proud recipient of the Top Polynesian Group award from the Pacific West Performing Arts Festival for many years. The school performs regularly throughout the year at private and commercial venues and travels and learns throughout Canada and the US, including Hawaii.