an idea of an entire life

Join Massy Books, McClelland & Stewart, the Museum of Vancouver, Bronwen Tate, and Billy-Ray Belcourt, for the launch of an idea of an entire life on September 23rd at 7 pm!

Registration is free but is required. We ask that you assess your proximity to privilege and register via donation if you're able.

Venue:

The event will be hosted at the Museum of Vancouver, 1100 Chestnut St, Vancouver, BC.

The venue is wheelchair accessible.

Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are recommended. We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

Books will be for sale at the event!

Parking:

For rates, please view THIS page and scroll down to "Parking."

There is some free street parking, visible HERE:

Getting to the MOV:

https://museumofvancouver.ca/directions-to-mov

About the Book:

In The Idea of An Entire Life, Belcourt delivers an intimate examination of twenty-first-century anguish, love, queerness, and political possibility. Through lyric verse, sonnets, fieldnotes, and fragments, the poems, sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes slyly humorous, are always finely crafted, putting to use the autobiographical and philosophical style that has come to define Belcourt’s body of work. By its close, the collection makes the urgent argument that we are each our own little statues of grief and awe.

About the Author:

BILLY-RAY BELCOURT (he/him) is from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection This Wound is a World. He has twice been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award—once in poetry for the debut and in non-fiction for his memoir, A History of My Brief Body. Both his works of fiction, A Minor Chorus and Coexistence, were national bestsellers. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

About the Moderator:

BRONWEN TATE is the author of the poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore. She is an Associate Professor of Teaching and Undergraduate Chair in the School of Creative Writing at UBC in Vancouver. A Practical Guide to Teaching Creative Writing: Supporting Inclusive Pedagogy, a collaboration with John Vigna, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic in Spring 2026.

Host or Publisher Massy Arts Society