Writing in Their Time: A Queer and Feminist Analysis of Vancouver’s 1979 Writing in Our Time Series

Abstract

The 1979 Writing in Our Time series became Vancouver’s most attended reading series, bringing light to the viability and international status of the city’s literary scene. While it has largely been remembered as a celebration of Vancouver’s literary culture, more marginalized voices of Vancouver’s literary communities have highlighted the series’ implications for gay male and female writers in the city. This article considers whose time was actually represented by the Writing in Our Time series. I suggest that while it gave gay men the opportunity to be onstage and speak about their concerns, including the homophobic attacks against bill bissett in the House of Commons that prompted the series, Writing in Our Time provided women limited opportunities to publicly share their work while relying upon their invisible labour to succeed. Through the production of a new socio-cultural history of the series, including an analysis of printed publications, oral histories, and audiovisual documentation of the events, this article demonstrates that Writing in Our Time was catalyzed by attacks on a gay writer, relied on women’s invisible labour, showcased the androcentric relations of Vancouver’s literary scene, and sparked resistance from feminists to women’s peripheral position in the series. I argue that, due to their proximity to or distance from heterosexual white males in power within the scene, the series simultaneously supported gay writers in Vancouver’s literary scene and further marginalized women by reinforcing sexist social hierarchies. The effects of these androcentric relations led to greater dialogue about issues affecting gay men within the series and by women about sexism within and outside of the series at that time.