North Shore, B.C.— North Shore Reads, the community-wide initiative presented by North Shore libraries that encourages local residents to connect over one book, returns virtually for its 2nd year on October 19 at 7 p.m. Celebrated author Ivan Coyote’s most recent book, Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures, is this year’s North Shore Read, selected to help us build connections and explore themes of healing and finding peace with the past.
CBC Radio’s Shelagh Rogers will join Ivan Coyote for a heartfelt and dynamic conversation about the powerful themes in Care Of: connecting with friends and strangers across generational divides, struggling to figure out one’s identity, working to build or repair community, the challenges of becoming a teen or an elder, and everything in between. The program will begin with a traditional Indigenous welcome from Carleen Thomas of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
In the early days of the Coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around “what now”? Ivan began to answer correspondence they received while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they’ve sent in the months since the lockdown.
Speaking on behalf of the North Shore Reads Committee, NVDPL Librarian Sara Oremland says the event is an opportunity to pause and reflect on the pandemic, on ourselves, on our relationships, and more.
“North Shore Reads exists to connect people across the North Shore through the shared experience of reading the same book. Ivan Coyote’s Care Of is a natural choice for this as it gives us readers a window into others’ lives in all their vulnerabilities, and inspires us to choose grace and compassion for one another,” says Oremland.
The event is free to attend but pre-registration is required online. For more info and to register, visit https://northshorereads22.eventbrite.com/