On May 20, 2025, Perfect Books in Ottawa hosted an intimate and emotionally resonant evening for the joint book launch of Familial Hungers by Christine Wu and No One Knows Us There by Jessica Bebenek.
The event was warmly hosted by poet and editor Ellen Chang-Richardson, whose thoughtful presence helped guide the audience through an evening of powerful literary offerings.
Christine Wu’s Familial Hungers delves into the complexities of intergenerational trauma, cultural identity, and the nuanced hunger for connection and understanding. Wu’s reading was quietly intense—her language precise, evocative, and heavy with unsaid histories.
Each poem seemed to peel back layers of memory and inheritance, inviting the audience into an intimate reckoning with the self and the familial past.
Jessica Bebenek’s No One Knows Us There offered a counterbalance in tone—blunt, aching, and at times darkly humorous. Bebenek read with a vulnerability that sharpened the impact of her work, which explores queerness, survival, and the longing for intimacy in a world that often refuses to recognize us. Her poems trace emotional cartographies of grief and resilience, articulating the experience of being both seen and unseen.
Check out the gallery.
Christine Wu & Jessica Bebenek @ Perfect Books
