‘Words that Last’: A Book Launch with Keiko Honda

Honda will be joined in conversation by Brenda Miller, an acclaimed American writer and one of the most influential contemporary figures in creative nonfiction.

In Words that Last, Honda writes from a particular threshold: her daughter’s room stands empty, her father’s voice thins across long-distance calls, her mother speaks to her six times daily though she’s been dead for six years. Living alone in Vancouver with her cat Pumpkin, she finds herself between languages, between countries, between the body she had and the body she inhabits now.

Honda turns to the Japanese poets who shaped her before she knew what poetry was: Matsuo Bashō, who found karumi (lightness) on swollen feet; Sei Shōnagon, who practiced okashi (delighted noticing) a millennium ago. Through concepts like mono no aware (the exquisite ache of impermanence) and yohaku (the eloquence of empty space), Honda excavates a way of attending to the world that her Western training had obscured.

What emerges is something rare: a practice of awareness that treats everyday objects—rain chains, teacups, her daughter’s silence, the drivers who hold doors—as literature itself. Each essay becomes what the Japanese call zuihitsu: following the brush wherever it leads, touching experience lightly enough to let it remain itself.

This event is free, but please RSVP on this Eventbrite as capacity is limited. Books will be on hand for sale and signing.

More about the author:

Dr. Keiko Honda is a writer, former cancer epidemiologist, and founder of the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society. Writing from her wheelchair, she explores the intersections of civic life, art, and embodied observation. She teaches the aesthetics of co-creation and zuihitsu at Simon Fraser University. Recognized with the 2025 King Charles III Coronation Medal, she is the author of Accidental Blooms, Hidden Flowers, The Broken Map Home, and Words That Last. Learn more about her work here.

More about the co-speaker:

Brenda Miller’s new hybrid collection, is out from Skinner House Books. She is the author of six additional essay collections, including A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form, and An Earlier Life, winner of the Washington State Book Award for Memoir. Her work has received seven Pushcart Prizes. She co-authored, with Holly J. Hughes, The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, and, with Suzanne Paola, Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, now in its third edition. She coined the term “Hermit Crab Essay.” Learn more about her work here.

More about Upstart & Crow:

Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit creative studio and literary incubator that champions writers, readers and stories, and the role they play in shaping our lives. We develop original programs, support artists and revel in creative projects focused on Literature In Translation, Climate Solutions, Poetry, Civic Dialogue, Community & Skills Building, all with the aim of elevating the role of literature and storytelling in our lives. Find us on Granville Island, Gibsons and online.

Accessibility:

The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees. As part of disability justice and community care for the chronically ill, vulnerable and elderly, we ask that you refrain from attending if you feel sick.

Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.