Events

Join us in the attic for our Portfolio Reading Series! Our next event features poet D.M. Bradford, who will be reading selections from their new collection Bottom Rail on Top. Opening readers include Laurent Lemay, Taylor Fleming, and Elke Sorensen. 

  Join us in the attic for our Portfolio Reading Series! Our next event features author, Sabrina Voerman, who will be reading selections from her new book, Blood Coven. Opening readers include Katie Carroll, Sophia Wasylinko, and Emerald Ayres.

Deadline: November 24, 2023 11:59pm Portal invites all VIU students in any department on all campuses to submit original written and visual works for print publication in our magazine’s next annual issue. Portal publishes written works in the genres of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and script, as well as visual works of art and photography. Visit our submissions page for all the details on how you can submit your work (for free!) for consideration for our 2024 issue of Portal Magazine  

Prior to her delivery of the Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet’s Lecture at VIU, celebrated 2024 Gustafson Poet Karen Solie will be offering a reading and Q&A session for VIU students on Wednesday March 13th, from 10:00am to 11:30am in Building 310, The Malaspina Theatre lobby. 

Celebrated 2024 Gustafson Poet Karen Solie will be performing a community reading at White Sails Brewing on Wednesday March, 13 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm with VIU Creative Writing student, Sam Bollinger opening. This event is free and open to the public. 

Karen Solie will deliver the Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet’s Lecture at Vancouver Island University on Thursday March 14, 2024 at 7:30pm in the Windsor Plywood Trades Discovery Centre at VIU (Building 108, Room 105). Free parking will be available for the event in lots A and U. The event is free and will be followed by a catered reception, cash bar, and book signing.

  VIU's final Arts and Humanities Colloquium talk of the academic year will be on March 22 at 10:00am in the Malaspina Theatre. Media Studies professor Joy Gugeler and current and former Portalers will present their talk entitled "Time Travelling through the Portal: The Evolution and Issues of a National Literary Magazine,"  a how-to meets walk-down-memory-lane. They will share how a black-and-white photocopied and stapled chapbook for a publishing class went from this early incarnation to a 96-page, full-colour, nationally distributed literary magazine on newsstands and online. In response to the shifting publishing landscape and the ambitions of the 20 students in the class over the last 15 years, Portal has developed a monthly reading series, a national contest, an innovative online and social media presence, a spotlight on writers from other cultures, podcast and print interviews with award-winning writers, and a celebration of graduates with new books. In an age demanding authenticity, how does a print magazine respond to its evolving readership and answer the call for inclusivity, decolonization, and representation with more than just intention? How do words that transport also reflect our times as we travel through the portal of our most intimate and artistic ideas onto the page?