The Single Onion kicks off 2026 with a special event celebrating 2SLGBTQI+ poets, organized by our guest curator Olivia Van Guinn. The featured readers include Flora Bews, Joni Doornenbal, and Chimedum Ohaegbu.

Main poets:

Flora Bews (She/Her) is a writer from the foothills of Treaty 7, near Longview, Alberta. After completing her MA, she realized she was trans and became a graphic designer and bookseller. She’s the Editor-in-Chief of RAT! and lives in Calgary with Sigourney Weaver, the cat.

Joni Doornenbal is a full-time radio enthusiast and a part-time writer, holding an MA in Writing, Editing, and Mediating from the University of Groningen.

Chimedum Ohaegbu resides in Moh’kinstsis, colonially known as Calgary, Alberta. She is a three-time Hugo Award winner, and Room Magazine’s managing editor. She’s a 2021 graduate of UBC’s Creative Writing Program (Bachelor of Fine Arts) and, as a playwright, the 2021 Black Arts Development Program. She loves insect facts, the theatre and stage plays, birds and magpies especially, and orchestral video game music. Her work can be found in Arc Poetry Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror Vol.3, and As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, among others. She is currently working on her first novel.

Olivia Van Guinn (they/them) is a Vietnamese-Canadian writer and bookseller. They have a BA in English from the University of Calgary, where they received the Kathleen and Russell Lane Award for Canadian Writing. Their prose and poetry is published in PRISM international, Room, Grain, The Queen’s Quarterly, and more. Olivia’s first novel is published with At Bay Press.

WHEN: Thursday, January 15th, 7pm

WHERE: Shelf Life Books, 1302 4 St SW

Event might also be streaming online: https://www.youtube.com/@SingleOnionPoetry