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Lee Maracle - “Celia’s Song” (Track of the Day)

Vancouver Writers Fest hosts Lee Maracle: A Life's Work tonight at The Nest on Granville island

The Vancouver Writers Festival presents Lee Maracle: A Life’s Work, tonight at 6 p.m. at The Nest on Granville Island. Raised in North Vancouver, Maracle, Tsleil-Waututh Chief Dan George’s granddaughter, has been called a “walking history book.”

The Writers Fest says about tonight’s event: “In an intimate conversation, we hear from the Elder about her life’s work, her vision for true reconciliation, and the joys of writing with her two daughters (Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter) for their latest work, Hope Matters. Maracle is proof of it.” For more information visit: https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-events-2019/lee-maracle-a-lifes-work/.

Maracle’s 2014 book, Celia’s Song (published by Cormorant Books), was recently shortlisted for the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature (awarded last week to Albanian writer Ismail Kadare), a US$50,000 award organized biennially by the University of Oklahoma and its magazine World Literature Today.

In 2016, she spoke about Celia’s Song and read from her work as part of the Social Justice Institute Noted Scholars Lecture Series, co-presented by the Indigenous Pedagogies Research Network at the University of British Columbia. After introductions Maracle begins to speak at 4:50. “Salmon is the hub of all our memories,” she tells her audience. “And that salmon comes from the flood . . .  These stories are true and this one is about the double-headed serpent.”

For an interview with Maracle from 2018 when she was named an officer of the Order of Canada visit: nsnews.com/entertainment/dossier/conversation-with-lee-maracle-1.23283849.