Agatha Press Spring 2026 Launch
Celebrate Agatha Press's first chapbooks of 2026 with readings from their authors: Lucas Crawford, Claire Kelly, and Dawn Carter!
Arrive early to mingle with a beer or coffee, pet & pose with Co-Publisher Agatha, and browse from Paper Birch's thoughtfully curated selection of books.
This is a free event with chapbooks available for sale. Hosted by Co-Publisher Matthew Stepanic.
Doors & cafe open at 6:30 p.m.
Readings start at 7:00 p.m.
Learn more about the chapbooks here: https://www.agathapress.com/shop
ACCESSIBILITY INFO
Street parking available. Bookstore is on the ground level. One gender-neutral washroom on site. Paper Birch Books is working toward being a scent-reduced space; if you can, please refrain from strongly or artificially scented products. Masks are no longer mandatory, but we encourage attendees to respect others' comfort levels and take necessary precautions. If you are feeling sick, please stay home. Please email [email protected] with any access questions or requests.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DAWN CARTER began her literary career in the 1990s. Most recently, her writing has appeared in The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology, the first collection of prairie-based Black literary works. She collaborated with artist Elsa Robinson for “Art From Here,” a series of visual art paired with literary reflections hosted by Latitude 53. She gave a walking lecture on the Art Gallery of Alberta’s “Inheritance” exhibit by visual artists Steven Nunoda, Adrian Stimson, and AA Bronson. She joined leading women poets in Rayanne Haine’s SkirtsAFire production, She, the Rock, in 2022. In January 2025, she headlined VERS/E, a queer poetry series in Edmonton. This is her first book.
LUCAS CRAWFORD writes books, including Muster Points (University of Calgary Press), which won the 2024 Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry from the Alberta Book Publishers’ Association. Lucas is from rural Nova Scotia and presently splits his time between Edmonton and Camrose as the University of Alberta’s Canada Research Chair in Transgender Creativity and Mental Health (Augustana Faculty). As part of his day job, Lucas directs Rewriting Ourselves, a collaborative pilot project that offers free poetry workshops in psychiatric wards. In 2025, Lucas was a musician in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, where he began work on his forthcoming series of animated video-poems about Leonard Cohen’s food-ways.
CLAIRE KELLY is a poet who lives in amiskwacîwâskahikan. She has published two previous chapbooks and two collections (One Thing — Then Another, ECW Press, and Maunder, Palimpsest Press). Disabled after cancer treatment, Claire spends hours steeping online, some say too many hours, trying to make sense of the world. She is currently working on a collection of non-abecedarian Cassandra Poems and hosts the open mic at the Olive Reading Series.