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Next week on Tuesday and Wednesday night, two remarkable authors will be in back-to-back events to discuss their new books at the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch in downtown Vancouver.
On Tuesday evening, Feb. 10, Toronto author, social justice activist and Anglican priest Maggie Helwig kicks off the 2026 season of Incite, a special free quarterly series featuring celebrated authors and emerging talents presented by the Vancouver Writers Fest and Vancouver Public Library.
Helwig’s 2025 book, Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community traces her lifelong journey through social justice activism, alongside a notable fight to keep her churchyard open to unhoused people.
Winner of the 2025 Toronto Book Award, Encampment was named one of 2025’s best books of the year by the Globe and Mail and CBC Books.
Helwig will be in conversation with Tyee senior editor Jackie Wong at the Incite event about her book.
“One of the things that strikes me most about attitudes toward the encampment is the really deep conviction, on the part of housed people, that the encampment residents are somehow getting away with something, that they are on a kind of permanent fun vacation while everyone else is going to work and behaving nicely,” Helwig writes.
“This is a different kind of fragility, the fragility of the people who live in the land of the well, but who know, on some unadmitted level, that no one has permanent residency here. I have never been much more than a tourist in the land of the well. And probably I should have been more patient, and I should have been more understanding. But the land of affliction is, one way and another, my home.”
By weaving accounts of the encampment in her churchyard with wide-ranging experiences derived from the care work in her personal life, Helwig asks challenging questions of readers, inviting them to consider the social and material conditions that have contributed to our understandings of who is ultimately deserving of care.
With Valerie Jerome, an unflinching look at racism in Canada
The following night, on Feb. 11, Tyee associate editor Harrison Mooney is moderating a Black History Month event at the Vancouver Public Library with Valerie Jerome, an Olympian and the author of Races: The Trials and Triumphs of Canada’s Fastest Family.
The book details the under-reported story of race and sports in Canada with Jerome’s family at its centre.
“Valerie Jerome comes from a legendary track family. Her grandfather, John ‘Army’ Howard, was Canada’s first Black Olympian. Her brother Harry Jerome, the record-setting sprinter, was once the world’s fastest man. Valerie herself represented Canada at the 1960s Summer Olympics. The Jeromes were remarkable athletes,” says Mooney.
“But they were also Black in this country at a time even more fraught than this present moment,” Mooney continues.
“Valerie Jerome has seen it all, and she will not stay silent, not even at 82. Her beautiful memoir, the brilliant Races, tells harrowing truths. It pulls no punches. Neither does she, and I’m honoured to be in conversation with this incredible athlete, author, activist and civil rights elder.”
Both the Feb. 10 and Feb. 11 author events take place from 7 to 8 p.m. in the Alice MacKay Room of the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch in downtown Vancouver. The events are free, but attendees are asked to register in advance. Online registration is available through the Vancouver Writers Fest for the Incite event with Maggie Helwig and through the Vancouver Public Library for an evening with Valerie Jerome. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
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