UBC Library Writer-in-Residence at Word Vancouver Festival at UBC Robson Square

Writer-in-Residence

Tsering Yangzom Lama is a Tibetan Canadian author whose debut novel, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies (Penguin Random House), won the GLCA New Writers Award as well as the Banff Mountain Book Award for Fiction & Poetry. Her novel also received nominations for The Giller Prize, Prix Émile Guimet, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Carol Shields Prize, The Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writers Prize, The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes, The VCU Cabell First Novel Prize, and The Toronto Book Awards. Tsering holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and a BA in Creative Writing and International Relations from the University of British Columbia. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies (Penguin Random House) is published in English in Canada, the United States, and India. Translations are available or forthcoming in French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Bulgarian, Tibetan, and Arabic.

Moderator

Evelyn Lau is a lifelong Vancouverite who has authored fourteen books, including nine volumes of poetry. Her memoir Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (HarperCollins, 1989), published when she was eighteen, was made into a CBC movie starring Sandra Oh in her first major role. Evelyn’s prose books have been translated into a dozen languages; her poetry has received the Milton Acorn People’s Poet Award, the Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a Canadian woman, and a National Magazine Award, as well as nominations for a BC Book Prize and the Governor-General’s Award. Her poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including the Best Canadian Poetry series. From 2011-2014, Evelyn served as Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver.