KPU instructor showcases debut work at upcoming book event
Molly Cross-Blanchard will be promoting her debut book, Exhibitionist, after it came out during the pandemic
KPU creative writing instructor Molly Cross-Blanchard will share her debut work, Exhibitionist, for the first time at the Massey Arts Society in Vancouver tomorrow. (KPU press release)
A Kwantlen Polytechnic University instructor will be promoting and reading from her work at the Massy Arts Society in Vancouver tomorrow.
Creative writing instructor Molly Cross-Blanchard will share Exhibitionist, a collection of poems about going through a break up, at the event Did You Miss Me? that features four debut authors reading their work.
The authors’ books were published during the COVID-19 pandemic and this will be the first time for them to share their work in-person.
“The book itself is a lot about learning to be alone after a long-term relationship has come crashing to a halt in a really hurtful and dramatic way,” Cross-Blanchard says.
“There’s a lot of millennial womanhood in there, some humour, [and] there’s a lot of pop culture references,” she says. “There’s some unsavory language that gets into what it means to be in your body … all of those things that we are maybe taught to be ashamed of about ourselves.”
Christopher Evans will be reading from his short story collection, Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth, and is the main organizer of this event.
Evans says he wasn’t able to properly launch his book when it was released and when he saw the Massey Arts Society was looking for events to be held at the space, he started thinking about other writers who had been in the same situation.
“Previous to the pandemic, I was reading several times a year, so this is an opportunity to reintroduce and give exposure to some of the books that got lost in the shuffle,” Evans says.
Evans’ short stories are about how people view themselves and how they want to be viewed by others.
“[COVID-19] has been a good and terrible time for self-reflection and that is something I have played with. I think it’s led people to ask a lot of questions about themselves and their life,” he says.
“So the space between how we want to be perceived and how we think we’re perceived by others, which you don’t have a lot of control over.”
The other authors who will be reading from their poems at the event are Selina Boan, who wrote Undoing Hours, and Shaun Robinson, who wrote If You Discover a Fire.
“Having people be able to talk to you about your book and what the book has meant to them, that’s a piece that’s missing from the online space,” Cross-Blanchard says. “We didn’t get to do our book tours, so it’s nice to be doing something about it.”
Signed copies of Cross-Blanchard’s Exhibitionist are available at the KPU bookstore. The Did You Miss Me? event will take place from 2:00 to 4:00 pm tomorrow and registration is free. For more information on the event and the authors, visit the Eventbrite website.
