Black Bear Review 10th Anniversary Launch Party

Black Bear Review Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Launch Party at the Nelson Museum and Archives
Nelson, BC | April 8, 2026 | 6:00 to 8:00 PM
The Black Bear Review, the West Kootenay’s only literary magazine, will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special launch party on April 8, 2026, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the Nelson Museum and Archives. This milestone event marks a decade of showcasing emerging writers and artists from the West Kootenay and beyond.
Founded in 2016, the Black Bear Review has grown into a vibrant, collaborative literary and arts journal that brings together students in Selkirk College’s Creative Writing and Digital Arts programs, along with faculty and writers from the community at large. Over the past ten years, it has provided a vital platform for creative expression, mentorship, and publication, helping to launch the careers of many emerging voices.
This year’s 10th anniversary issue explores the theme of “Home,” a concept described by Managing Editor Ana Camila Cano Bates as “a polysemous word… one that has many lives.” The issue features a diverse range of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art that reflects on belonging, displacement, memory, and identity. As Cano Bates writes, “Home is everything around us. Home is what we are.”
The launch party will feature readings from past and current contributors, including Auriel Wingender, Lia Kajari, Logan Hale, Jordan Mounteer, Babafemi Osipitan, and Jess Trejis. Copies of the magazine will be available for purchase (cash only), and there will be prizes and literary games. The event offers the opportunity to celebrate the journal’s legacy as “a home for mentorship, creative belonging, and a stepping stone for students as they continue their journeys in the arts,” as noted by co-founders and faculty advisors Leesa Dean and Renée Harper.
Event Details:
Black Bear Review 10th Anniversary Launch Party
April 8, 2026
6:00 to 8:00 PM
Nelson Museum and Archives
Free and open to the public
Artists and writers from this year’s publication will also be present at the Selkirk College Digital Arts Year End Show on April 17 and 18, 2026, at Selkirk’s Tenth Street Campus. Magazines will also be sold after the launch at Otter Books and Notably in Nelson.