STARFest presents Jen Sookfong Lee in conversation with Emily Riddle

Tickets can be purchased at shop.sapl.ca

Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her son in North Burnaby. Her memoir, Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart, was a finalist for the 2024 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award, was named a Best Book of 2023 by the Globe and Mail and Apple Books Canada, and was a TODAY Show Recommended Read. Jen is also the author of The Conjoined, longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award; The End of East; The Shadow List; and Finding Home. Jen acquires and edits books for ECW Press.

The Hunger We Pass Down

A haunting novel about the demons passed down through five generations of women in a Chinese Canadian family, and what it might take for them to finally break free of the past. The Hunger We Pass Down is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about how unspoken legacies of violence can shape a family. It follows the relentless spectre of intergenerational trauma as it is handed down, and asks what it might take to break the cycle — heroism, depravity, or both.

Emily Riddle (she/her) is Nehiyaw and a member of the Alexander First Nation (Kipohtakaw) in Treaty 6 Territory. She is a writer and textile artist based in Amisko Waciw Wâskahikan (Edmonton, Canada). In 2022, she released her first full length poetry collection, The Big Melt which won the Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian first book award. Her writing has been published in The Malahat Review, Canadian Art, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, among others.