Many thanks to Vancouver's third Poet Laureate, Evelyn Lau, who helped launch the Aspiring Canadian Poets Contest by serving as our Honorary Patron in 2012.
Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver in 1971 and is the author of five volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel, with works translated into a dozen languages worldwide. She is at work on her sixth collection of poetry.
Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a movie starring Sandra Oh. You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award, and Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor General's Award for poetry. Her poems have been included in Best American Poetry and Best Canadian Poetry and have received a National Magazine Award. Her most recent collection, Living Under Plastic, won the 2011 Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a woman in Canada.
In October 2011 at the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference, Evelyn Lau was appointed Vancouver’s third Poet Laureate. Starting in March 2012, she will offer one-to-one consultations with local aspiring poets at Vancouver Central Library. Evelyn has also mentored new writers through UBC and SFU.
