Naomi Beth Wakan - A Gabriola Notebook

Available at Page's Resort for $20

In Gabriola Notebook, Naomi Beth Wakan offers clear-eyed observations of her chosen home of Gabriola Island. The book is wise and cynical, yet also rich, respectful and amusing. Naomi wryly contemplates the big questions—mortality, spirituality, love, enlightenment—while honouring the daily interactions and local heroes that form our community. Delightful and imaginative, funny and fearless, this is the guidebook to life on Gabriola that you won’t find at the tourism office.

Michelle Benjamin, Executive Director, Gabriola Arts Council

Written in a warm and playful tone, A Gabriola Notebook includes a series of elegant tanka poems that are introduced in lucid prose. Subjects ranging from politics to fashion are tackled with enthusiasm, honesty, and the occasional well aimed nudge by a highly sharpened literary elbow.

Jesse Birch, Curator, Nanaimo Art Gallery

Naomi Beth Wakan’s new book, A Gabriola Notebook, is a homage to Gabriola residents. Her writing is humorous, ironical, sometimes satirical, but very warm. The photos by her husband, Elias Wakan are also very enjoyable.

Kozue Uzawa, editor of GUSTS: Contemporary Tanka

When I sat down to read Naomi's notes about her island I quickly become lost; lost in the stories of the people, their newspapers, their singing and their politics. I whiled away an afternoon seeing the island world and its people through her unerring critical eye. Sipping tea, wearing a wry smile, and all the time thinking, with delight, how well Naomi has caught her islanders.

Diane Brennan, Nanaimo city councillor

     I like Gabriola Notebook, as I like Naomi Wakan’s Gabriola Island, where “new kale is sprouting from the compost.” Her own Gabriola world, her own curiosity: “I’ve always wanted to know what happens next” she writes. So do we.

Wendy Morton, roving prize-winning poet, maker of wonderful soup and a raven-watcher. She lives west of Sooke where kale also sprouts from the compost.

Pacific-Rim Publishers                                                                                                                     ISBN 978-0-921358-40-4

www.naomiwakan.com