Joy will be celebrating her 9oth birthday this June. Please join us for an afternoon reading with tea and cake at 92 Isabella. Sunday June 8th from 2:00 to 4PM. Doors open at 1:30 PWYC. Suggested donation $10-$15.
This is a rare opportunity to hear one of Canada’s most significant authors in an intimate setting at Foy House, an 1888 mansion in downtown Toronto
Joy Kogawa was born on June 6, 1935, in Vancouver. She grew up in a largely white, middle-class community until the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Twelve weeks later Joy and her family were sent to an internment camp for Japanese Canadians.
Kogawa was first published as a poet in 1968 with The Splintered Moon. She began to work as a staff writer for the Office of the Prime Minister in 1974. In 1981 she published her first prose work: Obasan, a semi-autobiographical novel. Kogawa adapted the book for
children as Naomi’s Road in 1985, followed by a sequel, Itsuka (1992). Obasan has been named as one of the most important books in Canadian history by the Literary Review of Canada.
Joy Kogawa will be reading excerpts from her works, including From the Lost and Found Department (2023)
“a profound work of spare, trenchant, and haunting poems that lets us stay with the quietest qualities of beauty and the sublime.”