Rachel Phan’s That Asian Girl Is a Problem is a bold, uncompromising collection about the pressures placed on racialized women to be smaller, quieter, more grateful. Blending memoir and cultural critique, Phan transforms the label of “problem” into a powerful act of resistance, defiance, and self-definition on her own terms.

Therese Estacion survived a rare infection that nearly killed her, but not without losing both her legs below the knees, several fingers, and reproductive organs. Phantompains is a visceral, imaginative collection exploring disability, grief and life by interweaving stark memories with dreamlike surrealism. Taking inspiration from Filipino horror and folk tales, Estacion incorporates some Visayan language into her work, telling stories of mermen, gnomes, and ogres that haunt childhood stories of the Philippines and, then, imaginings in her hospital room, where she spent months recovering after her operations. Estacion says she wrote these poems out of necessity: an essential task to deal with the trauma of hospitalization and what followed. Now, they are demonstrations of the power of our imagination to provide catharsis, preserve memory, rebel and even to find self-love.

In her tenth volume of poetry, Parade of Storms, award-winning author Evelyn Lau turns her focus on the weather. Never having thought of herself as an environmental poet, the author found that under the strictures of the pandemic, the recent effects of climate change became more and more intrusive and unavoidable. Storms, floods, wildfires, and environmental devastations sent news headlines leaping out in sharp relief — “a river in the sky,” “atmospheric rivers,” “parade of storms,” “heat dome” — and in such poetic terminology. Weather, both physical and emotional, forms the backdrop to this new collection. Other themes that appear in the author’s previous work — relationships, the body, aging/illness/mortality, place, mood disorders, the shadows of the past — are explored here too.

Proceeds from this year’s brunch will go to support the Kemosa Scholarship for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Mothers Who Write. Established in 2017, The Kemosa Scholarship offers an opportunity for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Mothers to obtain resources to help them complete the work on their writing.