On Thursday, May 15th, Island Studies Press is presenting a coast-to-coast reading featuring visiting writers Jenna Butler and Karen Loucks from the West Coast alongside local poets Brent MacLaine and Bren Simmers. The event, which is free and all are welcome, will be held at 7 pm, in the Schurman Market Square in McDougall Hall at UPEI. Bookmark is pleased to be participating, we hope you will join us for what will be a wonderful evening.

Dr. Jenna Butler’s essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery, Revery: A Year of Bees, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award and a longlisted title for CBC Canada Reads. A retired professor of creative and environmental writing, Butler works on the land between a collaborative off-grid organic farm in northern Treaty 6 and the unceded traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples of Vancouver Island.

Karen Loucks is the winner of the High Marsh Press Deborah Wills Chapbook Contest (2024) and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize (2023). Her poetry appears in the anthologies Worth More Standing, Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds, and Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry. She lives and writes in Victoria, BC, the unceded traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples.

Dr. Brent MacLaine is a Professor Emeritus at the Department of English at UPEI and the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently A Skeptic in Springtime. He is the recipient of the Prince Edward Island Book Award and the Atlantic Poetry Award. He grew up in the rural community of Rice Point, PEI.

Bren Simmers is the author of five books including The Work, which was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award and the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award. Born and raised in Vancouver, she now calls Epekwitk home.