Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food will bring to the table some of Canada's best contemporary writers, celebrating all that is unique about Vancouver's literary and culinary scene. Punctuated by beautiful local food photographs, interviews with and recipes from some of our top local chefs, each of these short pieces will shock, comfort, praise, entice, or invite reconciliation, all while illuminating our living history through the lens of food. Sustenance is also a community response to the needs of new arrivals or low-income families in our city. Writers will be donating their honoraria to the Farmers Market Nutrition Coupon Program. A portion of sales from every book will to towards providing a refugee or low-income family with fresh, locally grown produce, and at the same time will support BC farmers, fishers, beekeepers, and gardeners.
Award-winning chefs, poets and writers in Sustenance include: Frank Pabst (Chef, Blue Water Café), Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Mark Winston, Susan Musgrave, Lorna Crozier, Thomas Haas (artisan chocolatier), Meeru Dhalwalla (Chef, Vij's and Rangoli), Ayelet Tsabari, and Adèle Barclay.
Rachel Rose's work has appeared in various journals including Poetry, The Malahat Review and The Best American Poetry, as well as numerous anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection, Song & Spectacle (Harbour, 2012) won the Audre Lorde Award in the US and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award in Canada. She was the librettist for the opera When the Sun Comes Out, which grapples with fundamentalism and forbidden love. She is the winner of the Peterson Memorial Prize for poetry and the Bronwen Wallace award for fiction, and the recipient of a 2014 Pushcart Prize. She is the Poet Laureate of Vancouver for 2014 to 2017.