Liars of Orpheus is a kids show for adults where writers produce small lectures on strange topics. This month, writers will be creating fun work on Myths, Legends and Lore. They win points from bootlegging their truths past their opponents or having their lies mistaken for truths. You can call it literary comedy or an excuse to eat chocolate outside of the house. You can say it’s a slapstick slam where the points don’t matter, if you wish. What you can never say is that its tepid or plain.
This episode of Liars of Orpheus entitled Myths and Lore features Alyssa Sy de Jesus, Holly Flauto, Kevin Spenst and Marc Perez.
Bios
Alyssa Sy de Jesus is a poet of Chinese heritage in search of the words and haunted artefacts of her family’s settlement in the Philippines and migration to Canada. The first movie she ever saw in theatres was "Ghost" starring Patrick Swayze, Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore. She was only a few months old and her parents couldn't find a babysitter. As a child, her bedtime stories were not fairytales but her dad's recaps of Twilight Zone episodes. She is based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh People. Previous publications: Chinatown Stories (Vancouver) and Living Hyphen (Toronto). She was co-editor of de-comp Journal’s “Translate Me Not” issue.
Holly Flauto (she/they) is a poet, story-teller, learner and instructor living and writing on the traditional, ancestral and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwxwú7mesh and Selilwitulh Nations. ̱ Their debut poetry-memoir collection exploring immigration to Canada as a modern-day settler, Permission to Settle, will be published with Anvil Press in September 2024.
Their fiction and creative memoir has previously been published in The Ex- Puritan, Joyland, and The Rusty Toque, and they perform as Stella Palermo on the local story and poetry slam stages. Holly is a Creative Writing and English instructor at Capilano University.
Kevin Spenst, a Pushcart Poetry nominee, is the author of Ignite, Jabbering with Bing Bong, Hearts Amok: a Memoir in Verse and A Bouquet Brought Back from Space, and 16 chapbooks including Surrey Sonnets (JackPine Press), Upend (Frog Hollow Press) a holm with the Alfred Gustav Press and the collaboratively written Recto, Verso, Chez the Devil’s Printers with Joshua Pitre (Collusion Books). In 2019, he was writer-in-residence at the Joy Kogawa House. His work has won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry, been nominated for both the Alfred G. Bailey Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and has appeared in dozens of publications including Event, the Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, CV2, the Rusty Toque, Lemon Hound, Poetry is Dead, and the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry 2019, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds. He co-organizes the Dead Poets Reading Series, writes a chapbook column in subTerrain magazine, is an occasional co-host with RC Weslowski on Wax Poetic on Co-op Radio, was the 2022 Poetry Mentor at SFU’s Writers Studio and teaches Poetry 2 through the Writers Studio. He lives in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory.
Marc Perez is a Filipino poet and writer living in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Fiddlehead, EVENT Magazine, decomp journal, CV2, PRISM international, and Vallum, among others. A recipient of grants from the BC Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, he has a BFA from the UBC School of Creative Writing. He is the author of the chapbook, Borderlands (Anstruther Press, 2020), and Dayo is his first full-length poetry collection.