Hello Over There! feat. Julia Hune Brown and Hayley Lowe
I met Julia Hune Brown more than a decade ago as a student in the teacher education program at OISE. We were part of a sub-stream of the program focused on equity and social justice. While I admired lots of my classmates, Julia stood out as someone particularly inspiring and impressive, an incredibly smart and thoughtful woman with a deep commitment to building community through artistic practice. I haven’t seen her IRL in the years since, but I’ve continued to admire her from afar, and have loved seeing her beautiful social media posts about her incredible life and work.
A few years ago, Julia got in touch to say she was working with the feminist Canadian children’s book publisher Second Story Press to create a picture book based on the radio documentary she’d made for the CBC program Storylines about the life of her grandmother Gar Yin Hune, who’d emigrated from China to Canada as a sword dancer in a Chinese opera troup. I was lucky enough to read a few drafts of the story as it came together, and witnessed how diligently Julia worked to distill this complex and sweeping story into something that worked within the tight confines a picture book, a form she’d never worked in before.
It is always nerve wracking as picture book writer to turn your manuscript over to an illustrator. You can work for months—years even—developing a concept, crafting a structure, honing your sentences, but you ultimately have little control over what the finished book will look like. The leap of faith this type of collaboration requires is part of the magic picture books, but it’s also really scary. When the book in question is as personal and historically important as this one, the process can feel that harder.
Thankfully, Hayely Lowe’s rich and dynamic illustrations absolutely do justice to Julia’s text, beautifully rendering both the grand sweep of Gar Yin’s journey, and the more intimate scale of the scenes she shares with her granddaughter Julie, the book’s young protagonist.
I particularly love the way her compositions at once define and blur the boundary between past and present ,while also invoking the dynamic movement of the sword dance.
HAYLEY: Growing up, did you ever try sword dancing?
JULIA: No unfortunately I have never tried sword dancing. But when I heard the stories of my Grandmother dancing with a sword I was so impressed and jealous. I was a very serious dancer as a kid but they never gave us swords at my ballet and modern dance studio!
JULIA: What was your favorite thing to draw as a kid?
HAYLEY: As a young kid, I enjoyed drawing characters like Snoopy, Spot, Danger Mouse, characters from the BEANO (I was a huge BEANO fan!) A lot of 80s/90s fan art was happening in the early days.
One time, I remember trying to draw a sweater draped over the back of a chair and getting frustrated with my blob of a drawing. My older brother (who is an incredible artist), appeared and taught me how to see the shapes within the sweater. The results blew my mind. Maybe because this was a pivotal moment in learning how to draw or maybe because it was a special connection with my brother but since I have always enjoyed drawing sweaters!
As an older kid I loved drawing people. I was particularly intrigued by faces and the stories behind them. This is still my favourite thing to draw. Julia sent me some wonderful photos of her Poh Poh, I spent many hours studying and sketching Gar Yin’s face!
Gar Yin Hune, the inspiration behind Poh Poh’s Sword.
ABOUT JULIA:
Julia Hune-Brown is a Chinese Canadian theater artist, teacher, and author. As a theater artist, she won awards for her community-engaged theater work. She has directed and facilitated performance projects with diverse communities across Canada. Julia currently teaches in her hometown of Toronto, where she lives with her partner and their two young children.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Word on the Street
Date: Sunday, September 27, 2026
Time: 12:00 pm- 12:45 p.m.
Location: Children’s Activity Tent, David Pecaut Square, 215 King Street Wes
CONNECT WITH JULIA ONLINE:
Instagram: @chinatownoralhistoryproject
ABOUT HAYLEY:
Hayley Lowe works as an illustrator and storyteller and enjoys exploring a range of media but is particularly drawn to pencil, charcoal, gouache and procreate. In addition to Poh Poh’s Sword, Hayley is launching a second book this fall, Juni and the Anything Tree, out last week from from Orca Books!
In a previous chapter Hayley worked as a contemporary dancer and a children’s yoga instructor where she used storytelling as a tool to teach class and ignite imaginations.
When not at her drawing table you can find her stomping through the forest with her daughter or curled up in the library next to a stack of picture books. Hayley lives with her husband and daughter in Vancouver, B.C
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Storytime with Friends at Vancouver Writer’s Fest
Date: October 21, 2026
Time: 10:15 am
Hayley will joining with Jami Gigot and Sara O’Leary to present share their latest picture books
Juni and the Anything Tree (Orca Books, 2026), written and Illustrated by Hayley Lowell.
