Next Time There's A Pandemic

"During my first post-lockdown massage, I willingly engaged in the requisite chit chat about lockdown experiences with my therapist. He gushed behind his mask: ‘Oh man. It was so great. Every day I woke up, drank coffee, read, rode my bike…’My therapist’s description did sound pretty great. But it was nothing like my own anxiety-ridden ordeal…Had I done the lockdown wrong?”

In Next Time There’s a Pandemic, artist Vivek Shraya reflects on how she might have approached 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic differently, and how challenging and changing pervasive expressions, attitudes, and behaviours might transform our experiences of life in—and after—the pandemic. What might happen if, rather than urging one another to “stay safe,” we focused instead on being caring? What if, instead of striving to “make the best of it” by doing something, we sometimes chose to do nothing? With generosity, Shraya captures the dissonances of this moment, urging us to keep showing up for each other so we are better prepared for the next time...and for all times.

ISBN: 9781772126051

Published: March 1, 2022

The University of Alberta Press

About the Author

Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, and film. Her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men was heralded by Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel.” She is the founder of the award-winning publishing imprint VS. Books that supports emerging BIPOC writers. A seven-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, Shraya lives in Treaty 7 territory, where she is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. J.R. Carpenter works across performance, print, and digital media. The Gathering Cloud won the New Media Writing Prize 2016. An Ocean of Static was highly commended by the Forward Prizes 2018 and was longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize. This is a Picture of Wind was one of The Guardian’s best poetry books of 2020. J.R. Carpenter was the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta in 2020-21. She lives in Plymouth, UK.