RETAIL VÉRITÉ: VANCOUVERAMA

“Retail Vérité: Vancouverama” is A Maior’s second novella, and the outcome of writing workshops led by A Maior at Western Front in February 2025. Through a blend of improvisation, LARPing, and speed dating, the participants sketched the characters, narrative, and setting for a supernatural mystery in real time. Operating in the spirit of exquisite corpse, the workshops followed improvisational exchanges guided by prompts. As a result, the collective writing process generated its own distinctive internal logic to draw a playful, critical portrait of contemporary retail phenomena.

The cohort featured James Albers, Kathy Feng, Manon Fraser, Fiona Glen, Tiziana La Melia, Ben Lickerman, Trey Le, August Mesic, Nina Ortiz, Paige Smid, Kiel Torres, and Yasmine Whaley-Kalaora.

A Maior is a clothing and home goods store located in the outskirts of Viseu, Portugal. Since 2016, an eponymous exhibition program has been hosted within the shopping environment. A Maior is managed by the staff, the artist Bruno Zhu, and his family. In 2022, A Maior was the writer-in-residence at San Serriffe in Amsterdam, who commissioned Retail Vérité, A Maior’s first novella.