Presented by SFU’s Department of English and SFU Library
Join SFU English alumnus Natalie Lim and special guests for a poetry book launch on Saturday, May 10th (2-4 PM) at SFU Harbour Centre campus (1400-1410).
In her debut book, award-winning poet Natalie Lim asks: How do we go on living and loving in a time of overlapping crises? Join us for an afternoon of poetry with special guests Mallory Tater, Tina Do and Isabella Wang as we celebrate the launch of Elegy for Opportunity. This event is generously sponsored by SFU’s Department of English, SFU Library and Wolsak & Wynn.
About Elegy for Opportunity
Anchored by elegies for NASA’s Opportunity rover and a series of love poems, this collection explores the tension and beauty of a world marked by grief through meditations on Dungeons & Dragons, sisterhood, the all-engulfing anxiety of the climate crisis and more. Confessional, funny and bursting with joy, Elegy for Opportunity extends a lifeline from Earth that will leave you feeling comforted, challenged and a little less alone in the universe. You can learn more about the book here.
Bios
Natalie Lim (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian poet living on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples (Vancouver, BC). She is the winner of the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize and Room Magazine’s 2020 Emerging Writer Award, with work published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and elsewhere. Elegy for Opportunity (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) is her debut book of poetry; she is also the author of a chapbook, arrhythmia (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022).
Mallory Tater is the author of four books: The Birth Yard: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2020), This Will Be Good: Poems (Book*Hug Press, 2018), as well as Lockers Are for Bearcats Only: Poems (forthcoming, Palimpsest Press, 2026) and the novel Soft Tissue (forthcoming, ECW Press, 2027). She is the recipient of CV2’s Foster Poetry Prize and the former publisher of Rahila’s Ghost Press, a now-retired chapbook press. Mallory currently lives in Vancouver, where she lectures at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing.
Isabella Wang is the author of Pebble Swing (Nightwood, 2021), a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and the chapbook On Forgetting a Language (Baseline Press, 2019). Among other recognitions, she has been shortlisted for Arc’s Poem of the Year Contest, The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award and Long Poem Contest, Minola Review’s Inaugural Poetry Contest, and was the youngest writer to be shortlisted twice for The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest. Wang’s poetry and prose have appeared in over thirty literary journals and five anthologies, most recently, The Spirits Have Nothing to Do with Us (Wolask & Wynn 2022). She collaborates with Poetry in Canada, and directs her own non-profit editing and mentorship program, Revise-Revision Street.
Tina Do is a Vancouver-based poet, living and working on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the Səlil̓wətaɬ, Skwxwú7mesh, Kwikwitlem, and xʷməθkwəy̓əm Nations. Her work has been published in The /tƐmz/ Review, Best Canadian Poetry, Canadian Literature, Room Magazine, and Canthius. She was also longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2020 and 2022. In her downtime, she is an unashamed dinosaur aficionado, anxious plant parent, and Shark Week fanatic. These days, you can catch her reading up on whether or not the Spinosaurus was aquatic and trying not to over-love her plants.
Venue and Accessibility
This in-person event takes place at the SFU’s Harbour Centre campus (Room 1400-1410). It is easily accessible by transit and near SkyTrain. The campus is wheelchair accessible and has wheelchair accessible washrooms. Gender neutral washrooms are also available.