On March 26th, 2026, the Fredericton writing community celebrated UNB English Professors and co-chairs of the Creative Writing Department Kasia Van Schaik and Sue Sinclair’s newest books at Gallery 78. In a heritage building, surrounded by artwork, and with a view of the Wolastoq behind them, Van Schaik read from her new hybrid memoir and critical theory book Women Among Monuments: Solitude, Permission, and the Pursuit of Female Genius, while Sinclair read from her new collection of poetry New-Fangled Rose. Matthew Gwathmey, a fellow poet and professor of English and creative writing at UNB, hosted the event, and the audience was full of professors, students, and local writers. It was a full house of roughly 40 attendees, overflowing from the room and into the main hall.
Women Among Monuments is a lyrical meditation on what it takes for a woman to claim the mantle of genius. During the launch, Van Schaik read excerpts from the book’s memoir sections, including an excerpt from when she moved to Canada from South Africa as a child and was looking for her new home on the steepest street in town. Later she read from a section about becoming a squatter on Toronto Island after the writer’s residency she was attending ran out of funding. Finally she read from a section about teaching creative writing to business-minded folks who couldn’t think of a possible complaint to write about—except for one student who complained to Louis Vuitton about a broken zipper. Van Schaik’s writing is emotive yet dappled with moments of humour that make it a joy to hear read aloud; in fact the audience was laughing along with every excerpt.
New-Fangled Rose collects poems that are loosely connected to the surprise, delight, and dread of a rose blooming out of season. Sinclair read her titular poem, which takes its name from Shakespeare and its inspiration from the surprising bloom of an out-of-season blueberry bush. Sinclair also read “NewBees” condemning the robotic pollinators of the same name meant to imitate precious real bees. Sinclair’s final poem of the evening, “Matchbox” captures a calm moment in a friend’s kitchen, where the parameters of reality expand so that the image of a bird on a matchbox takes flight. Sinclair’s poems have a knack for finding beauty in the everyday and making the reader feel tenderness toward the natural world, and these “new-fangled” poems are no exception. At the end of each of Sinclair’s poems, the audience would gasp or sigh, awed by her masterful skill at crafting the perfect final line.
The evening ended with a meditation on the nature of “complaints” prompted by a question from local poet and retired professor Ross Leckie.
After attending this free event (with cake!) and hearing the as-ever brilliant voices of Van Schaik and Sinclair, this attendee has nothing to complain about.
