Arts
ABOUT THIS EPISODE: In this episode, host Megan Cole talks to David McIlwraith, editor of The Diary of Dukesang Wong: A Voice from Gold Mountain, which is a finalist for the 2021 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. In their conversation David talks about how he found the diaries, and how the white settler lens has shaped how we see the Chinese experience in the colonization of Canada. ABOUT DAVID MCILWRAITH: David McIlwraith has been a writer, teacher, actor, and director. During a career in theatre, film, and television, he wrote and directed award-nominated documentaries and television programs, including Celesta Found, The Lynching of Louie Sam, In Chinatown, and Harrowsmith Country Life. He has worked across Canada in the development of new Canadian plays. As an actor, he has played roles from Romeo to Prospero, and he has taught at the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta. He spent a decade searching for and then researching this first-person account of the nineteenth-century Chinese experience in North America. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife and daughter and spends summers with friends on Salt Spring Island. ABOUT MEGAN COLE: Megan Cole the Director of Audience Development for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. She is also a writer based on the territory of the Tla'amin Nation. Megan writes creative nonfiction and has had essays published in The Puritan, Untethered, Invisible publishing's invisiblog, This Magazine and more. She has her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King's College and is working her first book titled Head Over Feet: The Lasting Heartache of First Loves. Find out more about Megan at megancolewriter.com ABOUT THE PODCAST: Writing the Coast is recorded and produced on the traditional territory of the Tla'amin Nation. As a settler on these lands, Megan Cole finds opportunities to learn and listen to the stories from those whose land was stolen. Writing the Coast is a recorded series of conversations, readings, and insights into the work of the writers, illustrators, and creators whose books are nominated for the annual BC and Yukon Book Prizes. We'll also check in on people in the writing community who are supporting books, writers and readers every day. The podcast is produced and hosted by Megan Cole.