Summerland Reading- Umar Turaki and Joanna Cockerline
Saturday, November 2, 1 - 2 PM,
Summerland Library, 9533 Main St, Summerland
All Welcome, Free Admission
We will be celebrating two great new books at this special reading. The two new books are connected by an African theme with novelist Umar Turaki and writer and editor Joanna Cockerline.
Umar Turaki's Every Drop of Blood is Red, a novel
Joanna Cockerline in Seeing Our Sisters, a short story anthology
The Girlship Collective, with the Kenyan and Canadian authors of the Seeing Our Sisters short story anthology. From left to right: Hellen Mwololo, Rehema Zuberi (ResH), Ellah Hallets, Joanna Cockerline, Munira Hussein, and Jacque Nzioka (TJ).
Umar Turaki is a writer and filmmaker from Jos, Nigeria who now teaches at UBC Okanagan and lives in Kelowna with his wife and two children. Most recently, his short film Bege screened at film festivals in New York, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. His fiction has been longlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Prize, shortlisted for the Miles Morland Scholarship, won the AFREADA Photo-Story Competition. He has contributed to the print anthologies Of This Our Country: Acclaimed Nigerian Writers on the Home, Identity, and Culture They Know, and Migrations: New Fiction from Africa. In 2016, he participated in the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop organised by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, where his short story "Her" was selected, edited, and published by Ms. Adichie. His debut novel, Such a Beautiful Thing to Behold, was published in 2022 by Farafina Books in Nigeria and by Little A globally and was named a best book of the year by the Boston Globe, Brittle Paper, and Open Country Magazine. His new novel, publishing in November 2024, is Every Drop of Blood is Red.
Joanna Cockerline teaches literature, communications, and creative writing at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Okanagan campus. A CBC Literary Awards prizewinner who has published fiction and poetry in publications such as Room, The Fiddlehead, En Route, and the International Human Rights Arts journal, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2022. Alongside a collective of Kenyan women writers, she is co-author of the short story anthology Seeing Our Sisters (2024). Joanna looks forward to the release of her novel forthcoming novel, Still. She lives in Kelowna, BC, Canada. Joanna will be introducing us to her work and to the work of the Kenyan women writers in the anthology.