On Oct. 20 at 4 p.m., Jess Housty will present their new debut poetry collection, Crushed Wild Mint, at the Laughing Oyster Book Shop in Courtenay. Housty is an author, land-based educator, and grassroots activist with Heiltsuk (Indigenous) and mixed settler ancestry. Crushed Wild Mint is a meditative collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted in the poet鈥檚 motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist, and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory.

Crushed Wild Mint officially releases on Oct. 21 and has been on the BC Bestseller List for over a month. Interest in the highly-anticipated poetry collection has snowballed due to media coverage and larger-than-expected pre-order numbers from B.C. booksellers.

Renowned author Eden Robinson has praised the book.

鈥淲hen the mountains of your territory are your ancestors, you paint the landscapes as Jess Housty does in this evocative, powerful collection of poetry: in the language of ceremony as taut as the inner surface of a mussel shell when the meat is stripped away,鈥� said Robinson. 鈥淭heir hyper-locality is precise medicine, an expansive, generous meditation on the mutual care of mountains, the forgiving veins of rivers, all the liminal territories and beings soaked in the verdant magic of the Pacific Northwest Coast.鈥�

For more information about the event, contact the Laughing Oyster at 250-334-2511 or email loyster@telus.net. The event is free to attend.