Oral Histories

  • A semi-transparent cassette tape. The label, in handwriting reads, "Sharon Thesen's Reading at Bowerings."

    On Sharon Thesen’s Reading at the Bowerings’

    Karis Shearer talks with George Bowering with contributions from Jean Baird about the Sharon Thesen’s reading and launch of Artemis Hates Romance at George and Angela Bowerings’ house in the early 1980s. Their conversation touches on other readings and literary events at the Bowerings’, a social hub for writers living in and visiting Vancouver.

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  • Jean Baird smiles while holding a California League Official Ball.

    Jean Baird tells “The Story of the Baseball.”

    Collector and bibliographer Jean Baird tells Karis Shearer the story of the baseball that she donated to the Baird-Bowering fonds at UBC Okanagan Special Collections and Archives.

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  • Out of Bounds: An Oral History.

    Karis Shearer talks with poet-professor Jodey Castricano about “Out of Bounds,” their creative work that recalls their experience in Oakalla and Maple Ridge prisons where they were serving for civil disobedience for blocking logging roads in Sulphur Pass in 1989.

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  • Jodey Castricano at their desk

    At What Point Did This All Begin?

    Jodey Castricano talks with Karis Shearer about their work as a student at SFU transcribing the “Duende, Muse, and Angel” session tape from the 1963 Poetry Conference. They read aloud a 1987 letter Jodey and Peggy Gersbrecht sent to Warren Tallman at SUNY Buffalo and talk about the spectral return of the archive.

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  • A black-and-white portrait of Robert Hogg. Robert is captured in motion writing at a table in front of him.

    Excerpt from Oral History with Deanna Fong and Karis Shearer

    Excerpt from Oral History with Deanna Fong and Karis Shearer A selection from an oral history in which Robert Hogg talks with Deanna Fong and Karis Shearer about his family history, early life, and beginning of his writing career. In this excerpt, Hogg tells the story of meeting Frank Davey and attending a reading and…

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