Wayde Compton writes poetry, fiction, and essays. Three of his books — The Outer Harbour, After Canaan, and The Revolving City — were finalists for the City of Vancouver Book Award, and the former won in 2015. His book 49th Parallel Psalm was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. In 2002, Compton co-founded the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, an organization dedicated to the public memory of Vancouver’s historical black community, and he is a member of the Northeast False Creek Stewardship Group. Compton is the program director of Creative Writing at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies, where he administrates the Writer’s Studio and the Southbank Writer’s Program.

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Recent links:

Short story (“Neither Illness Nor Wellness”) forthcoming in the “Writing Black Canadas” special issue of Transition

Judging the seventh annual Robin Blaser Award for the Capilano Review

Reading the poetry of Jamie Reid at the Dead Poets Reading Series

Video of turntable lecture with Jason de Couto at the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice “Sound Lines: Improvisation, Text, and Media” colloquium in 2010

Panel with Kate Bird, Aaron Chapman, and Charles Demers at the Vancouver Public Library

Audio recording of the lecture that became “Blackvoice and Stately Ways: Isaac Dickson, Mifflin Gibbs, and Black British Columbia’s First Trials of Authenticity” in After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region (2010), at the Kootenay School of Writing in 2001

Libretto of James Douglas: An Opera, co-authored with Jónína Kirton

Keynote (“Black Public Intellectuals in British Columbia: Two Centuries, Four Visions”) at the International Conference on Cultural Studies and Education at the University of British Columbia

Interview on Unceded Airwaves at CITR Radio

Panel at the Writer’s Union of Canada conference, OnWords 2017 (“To Write Is To Resist”)

Presentation at the Havana International Book Fair

Press on Hogan’s Alley in The Source

Forum about the film Secret Vancouver: Return to Hogan’s Alley (2016)

Judging the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry

Press in the Nanaimo News Bulletin

Press in The Navigator: Vancouver Island University Student Press

Talk at the Black Studies Lectures Series, York University, Toronto

Keynote at the Race Literacies Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Guest editorial on Hogan’s Alley in the Metro

City of Vancouver Book Award nomination for The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them

Documentary on Hogan’s Alley

Interview on the CBC show Our Vancouver

Digital upload of Prism International 22.4 (1984), featured in “The Repossession of Fred Booker”

Review of The Outer Harbour in The Rusty Toque

City of Vancouver Book Award for The Outer Harbour

Review of The Outer Harbour in Full Stop

Podcast interview on Can’t Lit

Profile in the Globe and Mail

Review of Becoming Richard Pryor by Scott Saul

YouTube channel

Opinion Page on “Pheneticizing Versus Passing” in the New York Times

Review of After Canaan in Quill and Quire

Review of After Canaan in BC Studies

Keynote at BC Nurses’ Union conference

Review of Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues by George Elliott Clarke

Article on Hogan’s Alley in the Ubyssey

Obituary for Al Hendrix in the New York Times

 

Email: wayde dot compton at gmail dot com