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"The Life of a Writer" – A Conversation with UBC Library's Writer-in-Residence Kevin Spenst

Join us for a special literary Q&A session featuring poet, writer, editor, and chapbook-maker Kevin Spenst in conversation with Bonnie Nish, Executive Director of Word Vancouver Festival. This engaging dialogue offers audiences the opportunity to hear from one of Vancouver’s most dynamic literary voices as he reflects on his wide-ranging creative practice, his deep engagement with community, and his lifelong relationship with poetry, performance, and place.
This intimate conversation will explore Spenst’s creative process, his thoughts on the evolving literary landscape, and the forms of experimentation, collaboration, and lived experience that shape his work. From poetry and chapbooks to performance and literary community-building, the session invites audiences into the mind of a writer whose work is playful, searching, and deeply rooted in language.
Moderator
Dr. Bonnie Nish is Executive Director of Word Vancouver and Pandora’s Collective Outreach Society. She holds a Master’s in Arts Education from Simon Fraser University and a PhD in Language and Literacy Education from the University of British Columbia, where she currently teaches. A certified Expressive Arts Therapist and faculty member at the Vancouver Expressive Arts Therapy School, Bonnie has led workshops across North America for over 20 years. She is the author of Love and Bones, co-editor of Concussion and Mild TBI: Not Just Another Headline, and co-author of Cantata in Two Voices with Jude Neale. Bonnie lives in Vancouver and is working on a new book.
Location: Peña Room (Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Level 3)
Date & Time: Thursday, October 1 – 3.00-4.30PM PT
- Date:
- Thursday, October 1, 2026
- Time:
- 3:00pm - 4:30pm
- Audience:
- All All UBC Students Community
- Categories:
- Writer-in-Residence
Kevin Spenst (he/him) is the author of four full-length books of poetry and 19 chapbooks. An assortment of his lyric essays, interviews with his neighbours, and personal accounts from others make up the collection Stanley Park Manor: a Collective History (Anvil Press, 2026) He is one of the organizers of the Dead Poets Reading Series, has a chapbook review column for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and is one of the poetry ambassadors for Vancouver’s 2025-2027 Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner. He is one of the Poetry Mentors at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory, where he cohabitates with the one and only Cheryl Rossi.