Union Electric Building, Port Union
Sunday, August 20
11 AM
Refreshments provided
Books available for purchase
Join artist and author Bushra Junaid as she reads from, and discusses, her children’s book The Possible Lives of WH, Sailor. This powerful poetic exploration ponders the identity of WH, whose remains were found in Labrador in the 1980s. Bushra explores who WH, a sailor of African descent, might have been, and the range of experiences that might have brought him to a remote Atlantic coast. In the process, she claims him as kin, and shines a vital light on the history of the African diaspora in the North Atlantic.
Included in the Globe & Mail’s list of the top 10 children’s books of 2022, The Possible Lives of WH, Sailor was named a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards Children’s Non Fiction award. The book is published by Running the Goat Books & Broadsides, based in Tors Cove, NL.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bushra Junaid is a multidisciplinary artist-curator based in Toronto whose work probes themes of history, memory, identity and placemaking. She is a member of the 2023 Bonavista Biennale’s Curatorial Advisory. Junaid’s project What Carries Us: Newfoundland and Labrador in the Black Atlantic at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery (2020) included video, mixed media, mural and photo-based works by Canadian and international artists as well as rare archival items, pivoting on Paul Gilroy’s concept of the “Black Atlantic” while also reflecting on John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea (2015). In 2016, Junaid co-curated (with Pamela Edmonds) New-Found-Lands: An Art Project Exploring Historical and Contemporary Connections between Newfoundland and the Caribbean Diaspora at Eastern Edge Gallery.