Alive at the Center
By Bonnie Nish, Chris Gilpin, Cody Walker, David D. Horowitz, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Jesse Lichenstein, Kathleen Flenniken, Leah Stenson, Rob Taylor, Robin Susanto, Susan Denning and Susan McCaslin
Ooligan is an award-winning not-for-profit general trade press that publishes books honoring the cultural and natural diversity of the Pacific Northwest.
Chris is a spoken word performer, videographer, and arts educator living in Vancouver, British Columbia.
He works as the Onsite Program Facilitator for Animating History at the Museum of Vancouver, and as the Program Coordinator for Vancouver Poetry House’s Word Play, Poetry in Schools.
At the 2012 Vancouver International Poetry Festival, Chris won the Nerd Slam one night and the Erotica Slam the next. He was also a two-time member of the Vancouver Poetry Slam Team (2008 & 2009), the champion of Vancouver’s 2008 Haiku Death Match, a finalist in the 2010 Write Bloody Press manuscript competition, the winner of Vancouver’s 2009 CBC Poetry Face-off, and the 2011 Vancouver Individual Poetry Slam Champion.
In the summer of 2006, he toured the Canadian Fringe circuit with his play “87% True: The Lies That Bind”, co-created with Rosemary Rowe. His literary work has been published in Geist, PRISM international, CV2, Poetry is Dead, Vancouver Review, The Canadian Review of Literature in Performance, and many others. He performs as part of the interactive multimedia clown rock supergroup Awesome Face.
Way back when, Chris graduated from the University of British Columbia with a BA in Film Studies. His graduating film, “Remembrance Dance”, was an official selection of the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival, and showed at other film festivals around the world.
Chris has toured as a spoken word poet throughout Canada and the northwestern United States, and performed in schools all over Vancouver’s Lower Mainland.
By Bonnie Nish, Chris Gilpin, Cody Walker, David D. Horowitz, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Jesse Lichenstein, Kathleen Flenniken, Leah Stenson, Rob Taylor, Robin Susanto, Susan Denning and Susan McCaslin