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Monday, October 5, 2009
3rd Season Opener!
Anne Compton |
Edo van Belkom |
Austin Clarke |
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Anne Compton’s most recent poetry collection is Asking questions
indoors and out (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, April, 2009). Processional
won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry (2005) and the Atlantic
Poetry Prize (2006). Opening the Island won the Atlantic Poetry
Prize in 2003. Compton is the author of the critical works A.J.M.Smith:
Canadian Metaphysical (1994) and Meetings with Maritime Poets
(2006), and editor of The Edge of Home: Milton Acorn from the Island
(2002) and co-editor of Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada
(2002). In 2008, she won the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the
Literary Arts and a National Magazine Award.
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Edo van Belkom is the Aurora, Bram Stoker and Silver Birch
award winning author of more than 30 books and 200 short stories of horror,
fantasy, mystery and science fiction. His latest titles include Wolf Man
(fourth book in the Wolf Pack series) and Battle Dragon. He is
also the author of the ongoing series "Mark Dalton: owner/operator"
which has been published continuously in the pages of Truck News Magazine
for the past 10 years. Visit his website at www.vanbelkom.com.
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Austin Clarke was born in Barbados in 1934 and emigrated to Canada to attend the
University of Toronto in 1955. His novel, The Polished
Hoe, won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize, the 2003
Trillium Award and the 2002 Giller Prize. The author of nine novels
and five short-story collections in the United States, England and Canada, Mr.
Clarke is the recipient of numerous awards including the W.O. Mitchell Prize;
the Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature; and the Order
of Canada. His latest novel, called, More, is available from Harper
Collins.
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Monday, November 2, 2009
Carla Drysdale |
Kelli Deeth |
Mike Spry |
Moez Surani |
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Carla
Drysdale was born in London, Ontario and was educated at Ryerson University in
Toronto as well as Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her poems have appeared
in Canadian and US journals, including the Literary Review of Canada, Canadian
Literature, The Fiddlehead, Global City Review, The Same,
and LIT. She has won several fellowships to the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts, where she collaborated with Pulitzer prize-winning composer
David Del Tredici, who set her poem, "New Year's Eve" to music. She
lives near Geneva, Switzerland, with her husband and two sons and works in
public radio as a news editor.
Carla's first book of poems, Little
Venus,
is forthcoming from Tightrope
Books.
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Kelli Deeth’s acclaimed short story collection ,The Girl Without Anyone,
published by HarperCollins in 2001, was chosen as one of the Globe and Mail’s
best books of the year. Her stories have been published in numerous literary
journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the
University of British Columbia, and teaches creative writing at the University
of Toronto.
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Mike Spry is a writer and editor who lives in Montreal.
He is the Managing Editor of Matrix magazine, coordinator of the Pilot
Reading Series, and the Programs Coordinator for Summer Literary Seminars
International. His latest book is JACK (Snare Books,
2008).
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Moez Surani's poetry and short fiction have been published internationally in
journals and anthologies such as Kiss Machine, PRISM International,
Arc, Vallum, 100 Poets Against the War, Prairie Fire, IV Lounge Nights
and The Dublin Quarterly. He has won or been shortlisted for a
number of awards, including Arc’s Poem of the Year, the CBC Literary
Award and, most recently, a Chalmers Arts Fellowship that is supporting an
extended term of research in India and East Africa. His debut collection
of poems, Reticent Bodies, will be published in September, 2009 by Wolsak
and Wynn.
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Monday, December 7, 2009
Tightrope Books "Best Canadian
Poetry in English Night"
John Reibetanz |
Karen Solie |
Ricardo Sternberg |
John Terpstra |
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John Reibetanz has published seven collections, and his poems have appeared in
such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, Canadian
Literature, and The Fiddlehead. His writing has been shortlisted for
the National Magazine Awards, and he has won first prize in the international
Petra Kenney Competition. His newest books are Near Relations (McClelland
and Stewart, 2005) and Transformations (Goose Lane Editions, 2006).
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Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Her
first collection of poems, Short
Haul Engine (Brick Books, 2001), won the BC Book Prize Dorothy Livesay
award, and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit
Prize, and
the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her second, Modern
and Normal (Brick Books, 2005), was shortlisted for the Trillium Poetry
Prize and included on the Globe
and Mail's list of the 100 best books of 2005. Her third, Pigeon,
was published in April by House of Anansi Press.
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Ricardo Sternberg has published poetry in journals on both sides of the border
incuding The
Paris Review, The
Nation, Poetry
(Chicago), Descant
and Literary
Review of Canada. He is the author of The
Invention of Honey (Vehicule Press,1990; reprinted1996, 2006) Map
of Dreams (Vehicule Press,1996) and Bamboo
Church (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003; repubished
2006). He lives in Toronto
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John Terpstra is the author of eight books of poetry, including his most recent,
Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems. An earlier work, Disarmament, was
short-listed for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. His poetry has won the
CBC Radio Literary Prize and the Bressani Prize, and several Arts Hamilton
Literary Awards. His non-fiction work, The Boys, or Waiting for the
Electrician’s Daughter was short-listed for both the Charles Taylor Prize
and the BC Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.
The book he will be reading from tonight is his new work of non-fiction, Skin
Boat: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations, which was released this fall from
Gaspereau Press. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he works as a writer and
carpenter.
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Monday, January 4, 2010
Rudy Fearon |
Susan Glickman |
Rosemary Sullivan |
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Rudy Fearon published his first book, Free Soil, on CD-Rom. His second
book, Spin, published on paper, features an introduction by George
Elliott Clarke. Rudy is one of the poets profiled in the television series Heart
of a Poet. Rudy is one of the organizers of the Art Bar Poetry Series, the
longest running poetry-only reading series in Canada. Noise in my Mind (RWF
Publications, 2008) is his latest book.
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Susan Glickman has published five books of poetry with Véhicule
Press: most recently, Running in Prospect Cemetery: New and Selected
Poems (2004). The Picturesque & the Sublime: A Poetics of the
Canadian Landscape (McGill-Queen’s, 1998) won both the Gabrielle
Roy Prize for criticism and the Raymond Klibansky Prize for studies
in the humanities. The Violin Lover (Goose Lane, 2006) won
the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction and was named one of the
year’s best novels by The National Post. Bernadette and the Lunch Bunch
(Second Story: 2008) is her latest book.
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Rosemary Sullivan was born in Montreal. She has written poetry, short
fiction, biography, literary criticism and journalism She is currently
Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. Her
book, Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille,
was awarded The Canadian Society for Yad Vashem Award in Holocaust
History, the Helen and Stan Vine Annual Canadian Jewish Book Awards.
Her book, Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen, won the Governor
General's Award for Non-fiction; The Canadian Authors' Association Prize
for Non-fiction; The University of British Columbia President's Medal for
Canadian Biography; and the City of Toronto Book Prize.
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Monday, February 1, 2010
Di Brandt |
Dayle Furlong |
Matthew Tierney |
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Di Brandt has published a dozen books, including poetry, creative essays, a
novel (with Annie Jacobsen and Jane Finlay-Young), and a multimedia poetry
anthology (with Barbara Godard). She has received numerous prizes, including the
Gerald Lampert Award, the CAA National Poetry Prize, the McNally
Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year, a Silver National Magazine Award
and the Foreward International Gold Medal for General Fiction (for Watermelon
Syrup, A Novel, with Annie Jacobsen and Jane Finlay-Young, WLUP, 2007 ). Her
website address is www.dibrandt.ca.
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Dayle Furlong studied English Literature & Fine Arts at York University. Her
poetry & fiction has appeared in Kiss Machine, The Puritan, Word &
The Voice. She works as a literary publicist and has worked as a
screenwriter’s assistant for the Showcase television series Slings &
Arrows. Her debut collection of poetry, Open Slowly was
published by Tightrope Books in Spring 2008. [photo credit: Liz Martin)
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Matthew Tierney’s second book, The
Hayflick Limit, came out with Coach House Books in spring 2009. He is a
recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award for Literature, and won 1st and 2nd
place in This Magazine’s 2005 Great Canadian Literary Hunt.
His poems have appeared in journals and magazines across Canada, including Maisonneuve, The
Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead and Eye Weekly,
among others. He lives in Toronto.
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Monday, March 1, 2010
Sonja Greckol |
Jacob Scheier |
Michael Winter |
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Sonja Greckol's first book, Gravity and Flight, was launched from Inanna
Press, Spring 2009. Her work has appeared in Literary Review of Canada,
Canadian Literature, Dalhousie Review, CV2, Canadian Women's
Studies, Fiddlehead and Matrix. She coordinates poetry for Women and Environments International Magazine and served on the
National Council of the League of Canadian Poets. She has taught college and university, studied order and disorder in jokes, done human rights and gender-based research and consulting, and does local activism while she writes. Her long poem,
"Emilie Explains Newton to Voltaire", was short-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2008.
Her next poetry project, entitled, Skin of the Day, uses newspaper headlines.
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Jacob Scheier is a Toronto born, poet and journalist living in New York
City. His debut poetry collection, More to Keep us Warm, (ECW
Press) won the 2008 Governor General's Award. His poems have
also appeared in several journals and magazines, including Descant and
Geist. Jacob is the former head editor of existere, York
University's Journal of Art and Literature, and is a regular contributor
to the Toronto alternative weekly, Now and the NYC progressive
newspaper The Indypendent. He is currently working on his second
poetry collection, a poetry and prose hybrid exploring his radical, Jewish
American heritage.
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Michael Winter is the author of five works of fiction. His most recent
novel is The Architects are Here. He?s the recipient of the Notable
Author Award from the Writer?s Trust (2008) and won the Winterset
Award for best Newfoundland book. He lives in Toronto and Conception
Bay, Newfoundland.
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Monday, April 5, 2010
Lillian Allen |
Ronna Bloom |
Scott Griffin |
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Lillian Allen has performed her work in many major venues in North America.
Allen won the Juno
Award for Best Reggae/Calypso Album for Revolutionary Tea Party in
1986 and Conditions Critical in 1988. She has performed her work for
television, film, radio, and print media across the world. Lillian is also a
professor of creative writing at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her
books include Psychic Unrest and Women Do This Every Day.
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Ronna Bloom is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Permiso, (Pedlar Press, 2009.) Her first book, Fear of the Ride ( Carleton University Press, 1996 ) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry. Personal Effects (Pedlar Press, 2000 ) was recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Public Works ( Pedlar Press, 2004 ) was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award . Her poems have been translated into Spanish and Bangla, and broadcast on CBC Radio. Ronna has led writing workshops across Canada and abroad, and is currently Poet in Community at the University of Toronto. www.ronnabloom.com.
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Scott Griffin is Chairman and founder of The Griffin Trust for
Excellence in Poetry. In addition he is Chairman, Director and majority
shareholder of House of Anansi Press/Groundwood Books. As a Director of
Canadian Executive Services Overseas (CESO), a Volunteer Advisor to CESO
and a Director of African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) Canada,
Griffin devotes a third of his time on this basis. In 2006, he published a
memoir entitled My Heart is Africa about his two-year aviation
adventure throughout that continent. He is also Chancellor of Bishop’s
University, Chairman of the Governors of Sedbergh School and a Director of
DGC Entertainment Ventures Corp. His interests include sailing, skiing,
flying, English literature and travel to remote places. He was born in
Hamilton, Ontario.
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Monday, May 3, 2010
Christian Bök |
David Day |
Ursula Pflug |
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Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (a work of experimental
literature), which has not only won the Griffin Prize for Poetic
Excellence, but which has also gone on to become an international
bestseller, both in Canada and in the UK. Bök currently works as an
Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary.
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David Day is a poet and author of over 40 books of poetry, ecology, history, fantasy, mythology and fiction. Day's books - for both adults and children - have sold over 4 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 20 languages. He has been an environmental columnist for Britain's Daily Mail, Evening Standard and Punch Magazine. He has also been dramaturge for the Birmingham Royal Ballet, playwright for Toronto Young People's Theatre and written a television series of a hundred programs translated into 18 languages.
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Ursula Pflug is the author of the novel Green Music (Tesseract Books,
2002) and the story collection After The Fires (Tightrope Books,
2008.) An award winning writer of short fiction, she has published over
fifty stories in Canada, the US and the UK. She is a Pushcart, Aurora,
and MK Hunter nominee. She has had her work produced for stage and
film and is also a produced playwright, freelance editor, book reviewer
and creative writing instructor. She is on the board of the Cooked and
Eaten Reading Series in Peterborough, Ontario.
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FROM: 2008/09 SEASON
October 1, 2008
Opening Night - 2nd season!
Karen Connelly
Dennis Lee
Susan Perly (fiction)
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November 5, 2008
Barry Dempster
Beatriz Hausner
Marilyn Gear Pilling
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December 3, 2008
Best Canadian Poetry in English
readings from the new anthology
Ken Babstock
Heather Cadsby
Jeramy Dodds
Bill Howell
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Edward Brown
Sandra Kasturi
Myna Wallin
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MONDAY,
February 2, 2009
Marian Botsford Fraser (memoir)
Jeanette Lynes
Nino Ricci (fiction)
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MONDAY, March 2, 2009
Adam Getty
Linda Leith (memoir)
Gianna Patriarca (fiction)
John Stiles (fiction)
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MONDAY, April 6, 2009
National Poetry Month!
Sandra Campbell (fiction)
John B. Lee
Andrew Pyper (fiction)
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MONDAY, May 4, 2009
Claudio Duran
Katherine Govier (fiction)
Eric Winter
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MONDAY, June 1, 2009
Moira MacDougall
Bruce Meyer
Alissa York
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Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Karen Connelly
Dennis Lee
Susan Perly
Karen Connelly
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| Karen Connelly is the author of seven books of
best-selling nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, the most recent being The
Lizard Cage. She has read from and lectured on her work in North
America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She is also a working photographer.
Her best-selling book, Touch The Dragon, A Thai Journal, won
the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction in 1993, and was a New York
Times Notable Travel Book of the Year in 2002. Her latest book The
Lizard Cage won Britain's 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for New
Writers, as well as being shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize 2006 and
longlisted for the Dublin Impac Award, 2006. The novel illuminates the
tragic story of modern Burma by focusing on the lives of two people: a
Burmese political prisoner and the child-labourer he befriends. A deeply
layered work about the transforming power of language and of love, it has
also been hailed as a suspenseful, page-turning thriller.
Her other books include Grace and Poison, One Room in a Castle, This
Brighter Prison, The Disorder of Love, and The Small Words in My
Body.
[taken from her Web site: karenconnelly.ca]
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Susan Perly
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Susan Perly wrote the novel Love Street, set in the voice of a
female New Orleans DJ, about which Peter Goddard said, "This is what
midnight radio should sound like; bluesy, sexy and cool."
She worked in radio for many years before writing fiction, as a studio
director, host, and documentary producer. She has reported from conflict
zones such as Chiapas, Guatemala, Argentina, and from Baghdad during the
Iran-Iraq war.
Her journalism, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in anthologies
and magazines, and she has performed her work live with jazz musicians.
She lives in her hometown Toronto with her husband, the poet Dennis Lee.
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Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Barry Dempster
Barry Dempster is the author of 9 collections of poetry, the most recent of
which, The Burning Alphabet, won the Canadian Authors Association Chalmers Award and was nominated for the Governor Generals Award. He has two other
poetry books forthcoming: Love Outlandish (Brick Books, 2009) and Ivan's Birches
(Pedlar Press, 2010). Dempster has also published a novel, The
Ascension of Jesse Rapture, two volumes of short stories and a children's book. He is presently senior editor at Brick Books, on staff for the
2008/09 Banff Wired Writing Studio and will be teaching a poetry workshop in Santiago, Chile this coming January.
Beatriz Hausner
Beatriz Hausner is a Toronto poet and the translator of many of the poets of
Spanish American surrealism, including Rosamel del Valle, César Moro, Enrique
Molina, Jorge Cáceres, among others. Hausner’s recent publications include
her poetry collection The Wardrobe Mistress (Ekstasis, 3003), the chapbook The
Archival Stone (LyricalMyrical, 2006), and a translation of Alvaro Mutis’
early fiction titled The Mansion (Ekstasis, 2007). Hausner is Consulting Editor
of the International Literary Quarterly (www.interlitq.org)
and was one of the founders of the Banff International Literary Translation
Centre.
Marilyn Gear Pilling
Marilyn Gear Pilling is the author of five books - two collections of
stories and three collections of poetry. Her most recent book of poetry is Cleavage:
a Life in Breasts. Her short stories and poetry have been published in most
of Canada’s literary magazines, read on the CBC, and have won and been
shortlisted for many national awards. She has read her work in locations
far and wide, including Harbourfront in Toronto, the Banff Centre in
Alberta, the Eden Mills Writers Festival, and at the historic Shakespeare
& Company Bookstore in Paris, France.
The Toronto Star said, of her fiction: "Pilling has a poet’s gift
for unlocking the strangeness beneath the familiar; her seductive stories reveal
the secret flamboyance under the surfaces of our lives."
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Best Canadian Poetry in English
(readings from the anthology)
Ken Babstock
Ken Babstock is the author of Mean (1999), winner of The Atlantic
Poetry Prize and Milton Acorn Award, Days into Flatspin
(2001), winner of a K.M. Hunter Award and shortlisted for The
Winterset Prize, and, most recently Airstream Land Yacht (2006),
which was a finalist for the Governor General's Award, The Winterset
Prize, The Griffin Prize, and won The Trillium Award for Poetry.
All three were Globe and Mail Books of The Year. Babstock's poems have
been translated into Dutch, German, French, and Serbo-Croatian. He lives in
Toronto where he works as a writer, editor, and teacher.
Heather Cadsby
Heather Cadsby is the author of three books of poetry. A Tantrum of Synonyms (Wolsak and
Wynn) was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. In 2008 her work has appeared in
CV2, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, The Windsor Review and
The Malahat Review. Her fourth book of poetry titled, Could be, will be published in fall 2009 by
Brick Books. She lives in Toronto.
Jeramy Dodds
Jeramy Dodds lives in Orono, Ontario. He is the winner of the 2006 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award and the
2007 CBC Literary Award in poetry. He works as a research archaeologist.
Bill Howell
Bill Howell was a network CBC Radio Drama producer-director for three decades. He has three full collections and his work appears regularly in Canadian literary journals. Recent work includes a feature in
New Quarterly and a pair of Mother Corp escapades in Rampike. Upcoming:
Antigonish Review, LRC, a seven-part serial piece in Descant, and his debut in
The New York Quarterly. His Ghost Test Flights (Rubicon
Press) is one of the winners of the 2008 WCDR Chapbook Challenge. Insomniac Press will publish Bill's fourth collection,
Porcupine Archery, in the spring.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Edward Brown
A lifelong resident of east end Toronto, Edward Brown is the author
of the recently published collection of linked short stories titled Playing
Basra (Exile Editions, 2008). His writing has appeared in several chapbooks,
as well as literary journals including The Dalhousie Review and Exile Quarterly.
He co-wrote the 2008 production of Many Rivers To Cross, staged at the
George Weston Recital Hall. In 2007 Edward Brown was nominated for the
prestigious Journey Prize.
Sandra KasturiSandra Kasturi is a poet, writer and editor living in
Toronto. She is currently working on an animated children’s TV series, a novel
and another poetry collection. In 2005 she won ARC magazine’s annual Poem of
the Year award for her poem "Old Men, Smoking." She also received a
Bram Stoker Award for her editorial work at the on-line magazine, ChiZine.
Sandra has written three poetry chapbooks and has edited the poetry anthology,
The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night. Her work has appeared
in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, On Spec,
several of the Tesseracts series, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry
Anthology, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, "Divine
Secrets of the Yaga Sisterhood" appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite
Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. Sandra is a founding member of
the Algonquin Square Table poetry workshop and runs her own imprint, Kelp Queen
Press, as well as doing time as the Senior Editor of ChiZine Publications. The
Animal Bridegroom is her first full-length poetry collection.
Myna Wallin
Myna Wallin's first full-length poetry collection, A Thousand Profane
Pieces, was published by Tightrope Books in 2006.
Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines including
Existere, Eye Weekly, Kiss Machine, Misunderstandings
Magazine, Taddle Creek, and the Literary Review of Canada. Myna has been hosting "In Other Words" on
CKLN, since 2004. She is on the Art Bar Poetry Series board and since 2007 she has been the Poetry Editor of
Tightrope Books, editing Sandra Kasturi's The Animal Bridegroom, and co-editing
I.V. Lounge Nights with Alex Boyd. Myna is currently working on a novella
entitled Confessions of a Reluctant Cougar.
MONDAY, February
2, 2009
Marian Botsford Fraser
Marian Botsford Fraser is a Canadian writer, broadcaster and critic
who grew up in northern Ontario and now lives in Toronto. She is the author of
three nonfiction books and numerous pieces for newspapers and magazines,
including GRANTA, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and The Literary Review of
Canada. She has hosted CBC Radio programs and done numerous documentaries for
the CBC Radio series IDEAS. In the early 90s she was co-ordinator for the Arctic
Council project in Ottawa and did work for the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada and the
Inuit Circumpolar Conference. She is a communications consultant and
speechwriter. She is currently the Books Editor for the Canadian magazine MORE.
Marian is a past president of PEN Canada and a former vice-chair of the board
of International PEN, past president of Necessary Angel Theatre Company.
Books
Walking the Line: Travels along the Canadian/American Border, Douglas&McIntyre/Sierra
Club Books, 1989-90
Solitaire: The Intimate Lives of Canadian Women, MacFarlane, Walter &
Ross, 2001
"Heartbreakingly intimate... a glimpse into the complex lives of single
women in a culture that still pretty much renders them invisible."—Vancouver
Sun
—Canadian national bestseller
Requiem for My Brother, Greystone Books/Douglas& McIntyre, 2006
"Simply a triumph, a finely wrought and very moving memoir of a family
and a country." —Alexander McCall Smith
— shortlist, 2007 British Columbia Award for Canadian Nonfiction
— winner, Northern Ontario Reads 2007, on CBC Radio
Other information
2000: Cultural Journalism programme, Banff School of Fine Arts
2002: National Magazine Awards finalist for "The Last Gold Mine"
Toronto Life
2003: "Bone Litter" in Granta 83, This Overheating World (also
in Spanish Granta #3)
2004: Profile, Gold Medal, "A day with Sibongile Ndubaza" United
Church Observer
2008: Juror, Nonfiction, Governor General’s Awards
Jeanette Lynes
Jeanette Lynes' fourth poetry collection, It's Hard Being Queen: The Dusty Springfield Poems, is forthcoming from Freehand Books in 2008. Her fifth book of
poems, The New Blue Distance, is forthcoming from Wolsak and Wynn in 2009. Jeanette's first novel will be published by Coteau Books in 2008. She recently published a chapbook, Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letter and Poems, with Alison Calder (Jack Pine Press, 2007).
Her edited volume in the Laurier Poetry Series, The Crisp Day Closing in My Hand: The Poetry of M. Travis Lane, appeared in 2007.
Jeanette is currently a visiting artist/scholar with the Department of Women's Studies at Queen's University.
[http://www.queensu.ca/wmns/JLynes.html]
Nino Ricci
Nino Ricci’s first
novel, Lives of the Saints, garnered international acclaim, appearing in
fifteen countries and winning a host of awards, including, in Canada, the
Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel
Award, and in England, the Betty Trask Award and the Winifred Holtby Prize. It
formed the first volume of a trilogy that was completed by In A Glass House
and Where She Has Gone, which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize for
Fiction. The Lives of the Saints trilogy was adapted for a miniseries
starring Sophia Loren, Sabrina Ferilli, and Kris Kristofferson. Ricci is also
the author of Testament, co-winner of the Trillium Award and shortlisted
for the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean and the Rogers Writers’
Trust Fiction Prize. In 2006, Ricci was the winner of the inaugural Alistair
MacLeod Award for Literary Achievement.
Born in Leamington, Ontario, to parents from the Molise region of Italy,
Ricci completed studies at York University in Toronto, at Concordia University
in Montreal, and at the University of Florence, and has taught both in Canada
and abroad. He now lives in Toronto, and is a past president of the Canadian
Centre of International PEN.
Nino Ricci’s newest novel is the The Origin of Species. According to
the Toronto Star, it is "Ricci’s masterstroke to date . . . . An
ambitious, thrilling novel that resists encapsulation and takes not a single
misstep." The Origin of Species recently earned Ricci his second
Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
MONDAY, March
2, 2009
Adam Getty
Adam Getty’s first collection, Reconciliation, received the Gerald
Lampert Memorial Award and the Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry, and was
shortlisted for the Trillium Poetry Award. His writing has been included in Breathing
Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets, and his more recent poetry collection, Repose
was published in 2008. Adam has worked in a number of different industrial
occupations and his experiences resonate throughout his poetry. He currently
lives in Hamilton. Ontario.
Linda Leith
Born in Belfast, Leith then lived in London and Basel before coming to Montreal as a teenager. She spent two years in Budapest in the early 1990s, during which she wrote her first novel, Birds of Passage, which is set in Hungary. Her second, The Tragedy Queen, inspired by a real-life incident, was translated into French by Agnès Guitard and subsequently won the 2003 Governor General's Award (as Un Amour de Salomé). It was also a "Canadians Recommend" title for Canada Reads in 2003. Her non-fiction publications include the essay Introducing Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes and the memoir Marrying Hungary, which was commissioned for publication in French by Aline Apostolska as Épouser la Hongrie and later appeared in Serbian. She is founder and artistic director of the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival.
[photo credit: Judith Lermer Crawley]
Gianna Patriarca
Gianna Patriarca was born in the region of Lazio, Italy, immigrated
to Canada as a child in 1960 and is a graduate of York University. Gianna has
published 6 books of poetry and one children’s book. Her first book Italian
Women and Other Tragedies was runner-up to the Milton Acorn People’s
Poetry Award. Gianna’s work has been extensively anthologized in three
countries and has been adapted for the stage, radio drama and numerous
documentaries. Gianna’s books appear on the course list of many Canadian,
American and Italian universities. She lives and works in Toronto.
John Stiles
John Stiles was born in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
His debut novel, The Insolent Boy, received acclaim in Canada and the US. He was
written two collections of poetry: Scouts Are Cancelled: The Annapolis Valley
Poems (2002) and Creamsicle Stick Shivs (2006) and most recently
published a novel, entitled Taking the Stairs (2008).
John’s writing has appeared in numerous journals and
magazines such as Pagitica, The Literary Review of Canada, Storyteller Magazine,
Taddle Creek and the anthology The IV Lounge Reader. John’s documentaries have
appeared on Much Music and in International film festivals across Canada. He
currently lives in London, UK. A documentary film about his struggles as a
writer (strongly resembling his latest novel Taking the Stairs) is
currently on the festival circuit; it has appeared at Toronto’s Hot Docs and
won the Atlantic Film Festival’s top documentary prize.
MONDAY, April
6, 2009
Sandra Campbell
Sandra Campbell will read from her novel Dreaming Georgina, the
story of a young girl from Twillingate, Newfoundland who fled to Paris in 1888
where she became the student of Mathilde Marchese, the most illustrious vocal
teacher in the city. After a brilliant but very brief singing career in Europe,
Georgina vanished without a trace. Years later she re-appeared in Twillingate
where she lived out her final days reclusively, in the company only of her
beloved pig. Throughout the story, the pig offers her unique perspective on the
singer’s life.
Sandra’s first novel, Getting To Normal (www.gettingtonormal.com)
was included in NOW Magazine’s Ten Top Books of 2001. In 2008, her personal
narrative Conspiracy was a winner in Grain magazine’s contest,
Long Grain of Truth.
John B. Lee
In 2005 John B. Lee was inducted as Poet Laureate of Brantford in perpetuity.
The same year he received the distinction of being named Honourary Life Member
of The Canadian Poetry Association. In 2007 he was made a member of the
Chancellor’s Circle of the President’s Club of McMaster University and named
first recipient of the Souwesto Award for his contribution to literature in his
home region of southwestern Ontario and he was named winner of the inaugural
Black Moss Press Souwesto Award for his contribution to the ethos of writing in
Southwestern Ontario. A recipient of over sixty prestigious international awards
for his writing he is winner of the $10,000 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, the
only two time recipient of the People’s Poetry Award, and 2006 winner of the
inaugural Souwesto Orison Writing Award (University of Windsor). In 2007 he was
named winner of the Winston Collins Award for Best Canadian Poem. He has
well-over fifty books published to date and is the editor of seven anthologies
including two best-selling works: That Sign of Perfection: poems and stories on
the game of hockey; and Smaller Than God: words of spiritual longing. His work
has appeared internationally in over 500 publications, and has been translated
into French, Spanish, Korean and Chinese. He has read his work in nations all
over the world including South Africa, France, Korea, Cuba, Canada and the
United States. He has received letters of praise from Nelson Mandela, Desmond
Tutu, Australian Poet, Les Murray, and Senator Romeo Dallaire. Called "the
greatest living poet in English," by poet George Whipple, he lives in
Brantford, Ontario where he works as a full time author.
Andrew Pyper
Andrew Pyper is the author of four bestselling novels, Lost Girls, The Trade Mission, The Wildfire Season and, most recently, The Killing Circle, which was selected a Best Crime Novel of the Year by The New York Times.
MONDAY, May
4, 2009
May the 4th be with YU - literary readings by Claudio Duran, Katherine Govier and Eric Winter
Two York University professors and a "Famous Fifty" York alumnus will be featuring at the Rowers Pub
Reading Series, a series that has two York people involved in the running of it. On May 4th, 2009,
poets Eric Winter (former Master of York's Calumet College from 1975 to 1987, and a professor emeritus
of York); Claudio Duran (a Senior Scholar at York, and co-founder of the Atkinson Readings at Noon
series) will be reading. They are joined by Katherine Govier (she is one of the "Famous Fifty":
one of 50 alumni chosen to celebrate 50 years of York University). The Rowers Pub Reading Series has,
on its board of directors, Ned Hagerman, co-founder of the Atkinson Readings at Noon, and a professor
emeritus of York University, and David Clink, a 20-year staff member at York.
Claudio Duran
Claudio Durán arrived in Canada in exile after the military
coup that deposed the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11,
1973. In 1974 he became a Professor of Philosophy and Social Science at York
University, where he is presently a Senior Scholar. In poetry, he has published Homenaje,
After the Usual Clients Have Gone Home, Depués del Silencio/After
Silence (with Chilean poet Jaime Gómez Rogers), Santiago, La
Infancia y los Exilios, and a biligual book La Infancia y los Exilios/Childhood
and Exile . His poetry has been published in several anthologies, and he has
participated in many poetry readings. He has been an organizer of poetry
readings in Toronto.
Katherine Govier
Katherine Govier is an award winning novelist
with a special interest in historical figures who are artists. Her novel,
Creation, about John James Audubon in Labrador, was a New York Times
Notable Book of the Year in 2003. Her fiction and non fiction has appeared
in the United Kingdom , Canada , the United States , the Commonwealth and
in translation in Holland , Italy , Turkey , and Slovenia . She is the
winner of Canada's Marian Engel Award for a woman writer in mid-career,
(1997) and the Toronto Book Award (1992).
She is the author of 8 novels and 3 short story collections and the editor
of two collections of travel essays.
Katherine will read her postcards and dip into her upcoming novel The Ghost
Brush
[bio info from [http://www.govier.com/presskit.htm]
Eric Winter
As a young man Eric had some experience with
ships and the politics of dockyards. After service in the navy he graduated in
economics and was immediately offered a job that was what might be called a
spyship. The location was to be Egypt and it was a well paid position but the
holidays were poor.( The company known as MI6 is still active though it is not
registered on the London Stock Exchange.) He preferred low pay with good
holidays so he turned down the offer and became a teacher.
Schools didn't have economics so he had to teach many things,
but mostly geography. That was a responsibility which led to the writing of a
number of texts including a geography of Tasmania and a series on Urban Canada.
.He has taught in Australia at McGill and York.
Serious poetry writing only began some thirty years ago after
joining the Atkinson College Readings at Noon series. His poetry has been
published in international journals and he has been the featured reader at
gatherings of poets in England and France as well as giving readings at several
locations in Canada.
Eric's first book of poetry is: The Man in the Hat (Hidden Brook Press:
2007)
MONDAY, June
1, 2009
Moira MacDougall
Moira MacDougall's
artistic life began as a serious student of classical ballet and modern dance.
It is poetry, however, that has wed her love of movement and rhythm with voice
and linguistic performance. Her poetry has been published both Canadian
and US literary journals. She is the Associate Poetry Editor of The
Literary Review of Canada. Bone Dream is her first collection of poetry.
Bruce Meyer
Bruce Meyer is the author of over twenty-seven books including The Golden Thread
and Heroes, and is a frequent broadcaster on CBC Radio One on literature. He is Professor of English in the Laurentian University BA Program at Georgian College and lives in Barrie. He is the artistic director of the Leacock Summer Literary Festival.
Alissa York
Alissa York
is an acclaimed fiction writer whose bestselling novels, Effigy (shortlisted
for the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize, longlisted for the 2008 IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award) and Mercy, have sold internationally. Her short fiction,
published in various literary journals and anthologies, and in the collection, Any
Given Power, has won the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award.
York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto with her
husband, artist Clive Holden. She is currently at work on her third novel.
FROM: 2007/08 SEASON
October 3, 2007
Opening Night!
George Elliott Clarke
Trevor Cole (fiction)
Molly Peacock
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November 7, 2007
Carol Malyon (fiction)
John Unrau
Harold Rhenisch
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December 5, 2007
Jonathan Bennett
Diana Fitzgerald Bryden (fiction)
A. F. Moritz
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January 2, 2008
Allan Briesmaster
Jessica Westhead (fiction)
Carleton Wilson
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February 6, 2008
Robert J. Sawyer (fiction)
Sarah Sheard (fiction)
Priscila Uppal
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March 5, 2008
DIFFERENT LOCATION:
Brass
Taps
(934 College St. at Dovercourt)
Kristen den Hartog (fiction)
Christopher Doda
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April 2, 2008
National Poetry Month!
Maureen Scott Harris
Lawrence Hill (fiction)
Adam Sol
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May 7, 2008
Stephen Cain
Gale Zoë Garnett (fiction)
Chandra Mayor
Olive Senior
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June 11, 2008 (2nd Wed. in June!)
The Rowers Read!
Ian Burgham
David Clink
Catherine Graham
Ned Hagerman
Halli Villegas
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Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 [opening
night!]:
George Elliott Clarke |
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George Elliott Clarke is a
poet, editor, playwright, literary critic, and a professor of English at
the University of Toronto. He joins print and oral poetry in his work. He
received the Governor-General’s Award (for poetry in English) for
Execution Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2000). He won the Portia
White prize in 1998, and the Archibald Lampman Award for Whylah
Falls (Polestar: 1990). He wrote the libretto for his
verse-play Beatrice Chancy (Polestar: 1999). Clarke’s book, Québécité (Gaspereau Press, 2003), is also a
jazzy opera, and he works regularly in music theatre and theatre
generally. Recently he received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Achievement Award.His new opera, Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path, composed by
D.D. Jackson, played Harbourfront Centre earlier this year as part of the New World Stage fest.
Clarke was awarded the Trudeau Foundation Fellows in 2005.
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Trevor Cole's writing has been compared to that of Truman Capote, Kingsley Amis and Carol Shields. The Globe and Mail called him "one of the best young novelists in this country." He has written two best-selling novels —
Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life and The Fearsome Particles — both short-listed for the Governor-General's award. He is also one of Canada's leading magazine journalists and the creator of
AuthorsAloud.com, a website of readings by Canadian writers. |
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007:
Harold Rhenish
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| Harold Rhenisch's "Return to Open
Water" (Ronsdale
Press) selects the best and of his work, new and old, from thirty years as a poet. He is this
year's
Malahat Review Long Poem Prize winner, and this year's winner of the
George Ryga Award for Social Responsibility in Literature, for The Wolves at
Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century (Brindle & Glass). A poet,
novelist, translator, and creative nonfictioneer, he lives on northern Vancouver Island. |
John Unrau
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| John Unrau was born in 1941 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1962 and received his MA and D.Phil from Oxford in 1969 with a thesis on John Ruskin's architectural writings and drawings. He has published two books on Ruskin,
Looking at Architecture with Ruskin (1978) and Ruskin and St. Mark's (1984), both with
Thames & Hudson, London. His first book of poetry, Iced
Water, was published by Salmon Publishing Ltd in 2000. He is a Professor Emeritus at Atkinson College, York University. |
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007:
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Jonathan Bennett
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| Jonathan Bennett
is the author of the novel After Battersea Park (Raincoast,
2001), a collection of poetry, Here is my street, this tree I planted
(ECW Press, 2004), and a collection of short stories, Verandah
People (Raincoast, 2003), which was runner up for the Danuta Gleed Literary
Award. His new novel, Entitlement, will be published in the Fall of 2008. He teaches writing at Trent university. Originally from Sydney, Australia, Jonathan now lives in Peterborough, Ontario. |
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Diana Fitzgerald Bryden
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| Diana Fitzgerald Bryden’s
second book of poetry, Clinic Day, was published by Brick Books in 2004.
Her first book was Learning Russian (Mansfield Press, 2000), which was
shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her poems have appeared in various
publications and anthologies in Canada and the United States. She is
currently working on a novel, Mealtime. |
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008:
Rowers Pub Reading Series (.com)
Rowers Pub – Jan 2, 2008 – 730 pm
(150 Harbord St. – South of
Bloor, West of Spadina)
Allan Briesmaster
Jessica Westhead
Carleton Wilson
Allan Briesmaster
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| Allan Briesmaster is a poet, publisher, freelance editor, and literary
consultant. He is one of the organizers of the Toronto WordStage reading series. He lives in
Thornhill, just north of Toronto, with his wife Holly, a
visual artist. Allan's latest book, Interstellar, from Quattro Books, reflects his ongoing interests in environmental matters, the impact of media
and the arts, and a lifelong fascination with science - especially astronomy
and cosmology. |
Jessica Westhead
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| Jessica Westhead is a Toronto writer who has published stories in litmags such as
The Antigonish Review, Matrix, THIS Magazine, Geist,
Taddle Creek, Forget Magazine, Word, and Kiss Machine. Her fiction was
also included in the anthology Desire, Doom & Vice: A Canadian
Collection, and her short-story chapbook, Those Girls, was published by
Greenboathouse Books in summer 2006. Her first novel, Pulpy and
Midge, was published by Coach House Books in Fall 2007. |
Carleton Wilson
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| Carleton Wilson is a graphic designer, writer and editor. He is the
publisher and general editor of Junction Books and the poetry editor for Nightwood Editions. He won the
E. J. Pratt Medal in Poetry in 1998 for his sequence of poems titled "Junction Sonnets", and in 2007 he won
U of T Magazine's alumni poetry contest. He lives in the West Toronto Junction. |
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008:
Rowers Pub Reading Series (.com)
Rowers Pub – Feb 6, 2008 – 730 pm
(150 Harbord St. – South of
Bloor, West of Spadina)
Robert J. Sawyer
Sarah Sheard
Priscila Uppal
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Sarah Sheard
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| Sarah Sheard is currently a mentor with the Humber School for Writers. Her novels have been published in the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Spain and Canada with translations to Dutch, German, Japanese, Spanish and French. Her short stories have appeared in more than a dozen literary publications and magazines across Canada with articles appearing in The Globe and Mail, NOW magazine, Books in Canada and many more. |
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008:
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
[730 p.m. - 10
p.m.]
DIFFERENT LOCATION:
Brass Taps
(934 College St. at Dovercourt)
Kristen den Hartog (fiction)
Christopher Doda
Wednesday, April
2nd, 2008:
Rowers Pub Reading Series (.com)
Harbord House
(formally Rowers Pub & Grill)
Apr 2, 2008 – 730 pm
(150 Harbord St. – South of
Bloor, West of Spadina)
Maureen Scott Harris
Lawrence Hill
Adam Sol
Maureen Scott Harris |
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Maureen Scott Harris was born in Prince Rupert, BC, grew up in Winnipeg, and lives in Toronto. She has worked as librarian, bookstore clerk, freelance writer/editor, and is now production manager for Brick Books. She has been Cataloguer of Rare Books and Special Collections at both the University of Toronto Library and at Trinity College Library, and from 1983-1993, was
co-ordinator of the Cataloguing-in-Publication Program of the University of Toronto Library.
A poet and essayist, Harris has two poetry collections: A Possible Landscape (Brick Books, 1993) and Drowning Lessons
(Pedlar Press, 2004), as well as journal publications. She has won both first and second prizes in Arc's Poem-of-the-Year contest, and second prize in the Short Grain contest and one of CV2's contests. Drowning Lessons was awarded the Trillium Prize for Poetry in May 2005.
BIO info source:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/betts/eng356/MaureenScottHarris.htm
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Lawrence Hill |
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| Lawrence Hill is the author of seven books, including the acclaimed novels
The Book of Negroes, Any Known Blood and Some Great
Thing, as well as the non-fiction books The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who
Walked Away from the War in Iraq (with Joshua Key) and Black Berry, Sweet
Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He lives in Burlington, ON.
Visit him online at www.lawrencehill.com. |
Adam Sol |
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| Adam Sol is the author of two collections of poetry:
Jonah’s Promise and Crowd of Sounds, which won Ontario’s
Trillium Award for Poetry in 2004. His third book, Jeremiah,
Ohio, will be published this Fall by House of Anansi Press. He is also the author of numerous essays and reviews for publications as various as the
Globe & Mail, The Forward, and Critique. He lives in Toronto and teaches in the Laurentian University @ Georgian College program. |
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008:
Rowers Pub Reading Series (.com)
Harbord House – May 7, 2008 – 730 pm
(150 Harbord St. – South of
Bloor, West of Spadina)
Stephen Cain
Gale Zoë Garnett
Chandra Mayor
Olive Senior
Stephen Cain
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| Stephen Cain is the author of American Standard/ Canada Dry,
a new collection of poetry from Coach House Books. Previous full-length
books include Torontology (ECW, 2001) and dyslexicon (Coach House, 1999).
Cain’s work has been anthologized in The Common Sky: Canadian Writers
Against the War, Career Suicide!: Contemporary Literary Humour and
side/lines: a new Canadian poetics.
His poems have appeared internationally, including in such journals as:
Rampike, Open Letter, Jacket (Australia), Matrix,
filling station, Essex
(U.S.), dANDelion, eye weekly and QSQ. |
Chandra Mayor |
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| Chandra Mayor is a Winnipeg writer and editor. The recipient of the 2004
John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer, she is the author of three books,
August Witch: poems (which won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award in 2003),
Cherry: a novel (winner of the 2005 Carol Shields Winnipeg Book
Award), and her new collection of short stories, All the Pretty Girls
(conundrum press 2008). She was the 2006/07 Writer-in-Residence at the Winnipeg Public Library, and is the Poetry Co-Editor for Prairie Fire Magazine. |
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