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Pauline Holdstock and Richard Kelly Kemick: Launch Party!

Thursday, August 6, 2026

Upstart & Crow Studio

Description

Behold, two amazing local authors have new collections out with one of our favourite Canadian indie presses, Biblioasis. Let’s celebrate!

Join us for a night of joyful readings and conversation with Pauline Holdstock, author of the short story What Endures, and Richard Kelly Kemick, author of the essay collection Decadence.

What Endures represents Holdstock’s responses to a world evolving at terrifying speed, exposing the absurd, the ridiculous, and the downright disturbing. Ranging from the eerily speculative to the flat-out comic, her stories attempt to discover what it is that saves us, time and again, from despair at ourselves and our world.

In Decadence, Kemick’s “accidental memoir of a sort,” the author ranges widely through his myriad preoccupations and obsessions — volleyball, municipal landfills, dogs, high school plays, Christmas villages, love — out of which the shape of a unique sensibility is revealed. Reminiscent of the three Davids — Rakoff, Sedaris, and Wallace — these essays accrete into a portrait of a man trying to make sense of a world in which there are no goddamn rules; and yet one in which every action has sometimes profound consequences.

This event is free, but please RSVP here as capacity is limited. Books will be on hand for sale and signing. THANK YOU for supporting local authors!

More about Upstart & Crow:

Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit creative studio and literary incubator that champions writers, readers and stories, and the role they play in shaping our lives. We develop original programs, support artists and revel in creative projects focused on Literature In Translation / Climate Solutions / Poetry / Civic Dialogue / Community & Skills Building … all with the aim of elevating the role of literature and storytelling in our lives. Find us on Granville Island, Gibsons and online at upstartandcrow.com.

Accessibility:

The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees. As part of disability justice and community care for the chronically ill, vulnerable and elderly, we ask that you refrain from attending if you feel sick.

Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.

Pauline Holdstock

Pauline Holdstock is an internationally published novelist, short fiction writer, and essayist. Her novels have been shortlisted for a number of awards, among them the Best First Novel Award, the Giller Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her novel Beyond Measure was the winner of the BC Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Award for Fiction. Her novels The Hunter and the Wild Girl and Confessions With Keith have each been awarded the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

Richard Kelly Kemick

Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His debut collection of short stories, Hello, Horse, was published by Biblioasis in 2024. He is also the author of I Am Herod (available on audiobook), the poetry collection Caribou Run, and the stage play Amor De Cosmos: A Delusional Musical. Richard’s limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan.

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