Commodore Books Blog

It was a very successful event: Kilian read and spoke about his new book and we sold many copies. To read more about the black pioneers, see Kilian’s blog.

We are very pleased to release this new and revised edition in 2008 - the 30th anniversary of its original printing, and the 150 year anniversary of the arrival of the first blacks to BC. Please come and celebrate the return to print of this landmark text of African Canadian history and studies. Copies will be available and Kilian will be there to read and to sign
books.

Thursday, November 13, 2008
8:30 pm - 10:00 pm
The Brickhouse Bistro & Bar
730 Main Street
Vancouver

It is with great sadness that we at Commodore Books mourn the loss of Fred Booker, who died at Burnaby General Hospital of pneumonia on June 4, 2008. Booker was our first author, and we are proud to have begun our publishing mission with his Adventures in Debt Collection. Booker’s fiction has been reviewed in multiple periodicals, including The Vancouver Sun and The Georgia Straight; his work has and will continue to be taught in colleges and universities; and Booker was writing new material right up to the very end. He was a versatile artist who published poems in a variety of literary journals across Canada in the 1970s, as well as releasing a series of folk-blues albums as a singer-writer into the 1980s. Later, he turned to short fiction, publishing stories in literary journals throughout the 1990s, eventually coming to our attention through Wayde Compton’s research for the anthology Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. A highlight of Booker’s career was hearing two of his stories dramatized on the CBC Radio One show Between the Covers in 2007, and knowing that his words were being heard across the nation. Booker is survived by his life partner, Monique, and all of us, his readers and friends.

COMMODORE BOOKS invites you to the launch of:

Stay Black & Die, by Addena Sumter-Freitag

Wednesday, 5 December 2007

8:30PM

at The Brickhouse, 730 Main Street (at Union), Vancouver

The author will read from her new book, which will be available for sale. The Brickhouse is a licensed bar. This event is free.

West Coast Line/Commodore Books and the SFU Library present:

Fred Booker, author of Adventures in Debt Collection, and
David Chariandy, author of Soucouyant: A Novel of Forgetting (Arsenal Pulp, 2007)

Tuesday, 20 November 2007
1PM

Simon Fraser University (Burnaby campus)
W.A.C. Bennett Library
Special Collections (7th floor)
Room 7100
(Admission free)

Fred will read at the Burnaby Writer’s Society’s 40th Anniversary Celebration

Thursday 4 October
7:30PM

The Burnaby Arts Council’s Deer Lake Gallery
6584 Deer Lake Avenue, Burnaby, BC

and

Cthonics Reading Series 
Fred Booker reads with Eden Robinson

Tuesday 16 October
7:30PM

The University of British Columbia
Thea’s Lounge, Thea Koerner Graduate Student Centre
6371 Crescent Road, UBC Campus

Hope to see you there. Copies of Adventures in Debt Collection will be available for sale at both readings.

Addena Sumter-Freitag will be performing poetry with The World Poetry Reading Series poets. Sept 01 at 2:30 p.m. at Afrikadey.

Come out and show your love

Fred Booker, originally scheduled to appear at this event, has cancelled for medical reasons. Look here for a re-scheduled appearance, hopefully later this year.

Hiromi Goto
Dorothy Trujillo Lusk
Meredith Quartermain

will read at at:

Room: COACH HOUSE
GREEN COLLEGE, 6201 CECIL GREEN PARK ROAD, UBC

THURSDAY, MAY 17

7:30 pm