New Book: Queers Like Me is out now!

Buy it here
bio:

Michael V. Smith is a writer, performer, filmmaker, and full professor teaching Creative Writing in the interdisciplinary department of Creative Studies at UBC’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC. Smith is an MFA grad from UBC’s Creative Writing program (1998).

Smith’s most recent project is The Floating Man, a feature documentary in which Smith ‘bares all’ to examine his gender construction, using his visual art and performance practice to examine a lifetime of untrue stories about his body.

His latest book Queers Like Me is a poetry collection about growing up as a small town queer, released in Fall 2023 with Book*hug.

Smith’s memoir, My Body Is Yours, has been translated into French and published by Éditeur TRIPTYQUE. Find Ceci est mon corps here. Translated by the amazing Benoît Laflamme. [Vous êtes francais/e? Cliquez ici pour plus d’information.]

 

Smith has won a number of awards for both his short film work and his writing. “I Dream a Queer Allegory”, made in collaboration with R.M. Vaughan and friends, won Best Video by Poets in the Cadence Video Poetry Festival, 2021.  Smith won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers. He’s won a Western Magazine Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Journey Prize. Smith’s novel, Cumberland (Cormorant Books, 2002), was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. As a member of the Miss Nomer Collective, their short film ‘Girl on Girl’ won the Colin Campbell Award for Best Canadian Male Short and the Best Canadian Female Short Award at the Inside Out Festival in Toronto.

 

His videos have played around the world, in cities such as Milan, Dublin, Turin, London, New York, Toronto, Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Glasgow, Lisbon, Beirut, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, SF, LA and Bombay. He has screened work at the British Film Institute, at the Lincoln Center with the New York Video Festival, and in the Vancouver International Film Festival.

 

As a performer, Smith has played dozens of cabarets and festivals, including Toronto’s VideoFag, nGbK gallery in Berlin, Junge Triebe Festival in Bielefeld, Germany, the 2011 Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands, the Vancouver Fringe Festival, the Entzaubert Festival in Berlin, Encuentro 2014 in Montreal, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, and an intervention with the Raumerweiterungshalle, Berlin, to name a few.

 

He organizes PONY, an annual queer cabaret, and co-presents the Student Okanagan Film Festival, both in Kelowna, BC.

 

His first book of poetry What You Can’t Have (Signature Editions, 2006) was short-listed for the ReLit Prize. In 2008, he published a hybrid book of concrete poems/photographs, Body of Text (Book*hug), created with photographer David Ellingsen. His book of poetry BAD IDEAS was released in May, 2017, from Nightwood Editions. Michael V. Smith’s second novel, Progress, was published Spring 2011 with Cormorant Books. His memoir, My Body Is Yours, was published in 2015 by Arsenal Pulp Press. A French translation is just out from les Éditions Triptyque. For more info, click books!

Past Book Events:  

 

OCT 27 | TORONTO LAUNCH | 7:00 PM (EST)
Launching with Book*hug authors Sandra Ridley (Vixen) and Kathryn Mockler (Anecdotes)
TRANZAC CLUB, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto, ON
Accessibility Info

​OCT 29 | CORNWALL LAUNCH | 6:00PM to 7PM (EST)
Reading with James K. Moran (Fear Itself)
Carrots n’ Date, 116 Pitt St, Cornwall, ON

OCT 30 | MONTREAL LAUNCH | 6:00PM to 7:30PM (EST)
Launching with Sandra Ridley (Vixen) and Kathryn Mockler (Anecdotes)
La P’tite Porte, 1122 boul. de Maisonneuve Est, Montréal, Qc

NOV 2 | OTTAWA LAUNCH | 6:30PM to 8PM (EST)
Reading with Sandra Ridley (Vixen), Kathryn Mockler (Anecdotes), Hana Shafi (People You Know, Places You’ve Been)
Perfect Books, 258A Elgin St., Ottawa, ON

NOV  16| KELOWNA LAUNCH | 7:00PM (PST)
Inspired Word Cafe

BNA Burger (map) 1254 Ellis St, Kelowna, BC V1Y 1Z4

past SCREENINGS for THE FLOATING MAN:  


WORLD PREMIERE SEPT 26 | CHICAGO | 9:30PM (GMT-5)

REELING Chicago Queer Film Festival

Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema, Theater 6

OCT 1 | PALM SPRINGS | 3:00 PM (PST)
CINEMA DIVERSE Palm Springs Queer Film Festival

2300 E Baristo Rd, Palm Springs, CA 92262, Cinema 3

​OCT 22 | CANADIAN PREMIERE VANCOUVER | 6:30PM (PST)
UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Vancouver BC, Theatre (lower level)

Other MVS highlights:

live broadcasts:

Check out Soundtrack, a queer oral history project, recorded live weekly from Sept 7 to Nov 9, 2021, featuring guests Ivan Coyote, Nicola Harwood, Zoe Whittall, SJ Sindu, Brianna Ferguson, Lucas Crawford, Ryan G. Hinds, Hasan Namir, and Suzette Mayr. Or watch them on YouTube.

Check out past LIVE BROADCASTS from MVS’s storytelling show, Have I told you the one about… At the start of the pandemic, MVS told “true stories for adult audiences” each night, live on YouTube for over two months. Some special guests also appear, with their own amazing stories.

MVS in “Have I told you the one about” (photo credit: Conrad Johnston)

 

new film: The Floating Man

MVS has just recently completed a feature doc about how his art practice helped him to remake his complicated relationship to masculinity. Want to program this film in your festival? Get in touch!

new chapbook: Grandma Cooper’s Corpse

Order a copy of Michael V.’s new chapbook Grandma Cooper’s Corpse from a great new small press out of the Okanagan: Broke Press!

In this stunning, genre-bending poetic monologue, Smith uses his expert narrative skills to recount the hilarious yet heartbreaking family tale of trying to locate his estranged grandmother’s corpse. Smith moves easily between tragedy and comedy creating a dynamic and complex portrait of a family who—despite living in close proximity in their small Ontario town—are torn apart by rivalry, resentment, poverty, and mental illness.

—Kathryn Mockler, publisher of the online climate journal Watch Your Head