Draft 18.3 August 27 at 3 p.m.
Please join us at 3 p.m. Sunday, August 27 2023 for a work-in-progress extravaganza featuring new and unpublished work by twelve authors.
This is the third in our Mixed Tongues season featuring work-in-progress which contemplates language(s). Curated by our collective member Gloria Blizzard, the Mixed Tongues season is a hybrid, lexical, aural experience that builds bridges between Canada’s multilingual literary communities. Our goal is to stretch our minds and hearts by hearing other perspectives and various iterations of human expression.
Here’s the lineup:
Rocco de Giacomo, Bernadette Gabay Dyer, Cristian Simionescu, Terri Favro and Ron Edding, Michael Fraser, Hollay Ghadery, Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann, Sofia Mostaghimi, Tyler Pennock, Elida Schogt, Jade Wallace, Julia Zarankin
More details about the authors are below.
Many thanks to the Ontario Arts Council as well as our generous audiences, for funding this reading.
Tickets are available through Eventbrite.
EVEN THOUGH THE EVENT IS LISTED AS “ONLINE” THIS IS A HYBRID READING.
Tickets are available for those who wish to attend in person at the St. Matthew Clubhouse, 450 Broadview Ave. Those who register for the in-person event will also receive the Zoom link. If you feel unwell, please attend on Zoom.
For the sake of accessibility, masks are encouraged at the in-person event. Tap-water is available for you to fill your own water-bottle if you bring one. Thank you so much for helping make Draft a welcoming space for everyone!
EVEN THOUGH THE EVENT IS LISTED AS “FREE” WE WELCOME YOUR DONATIONS, IF YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE. YOU CAN DO THIS BY SCROLLING DOWN PAST THE “FREE” TICKETS ON EVENTBRITE.
All receipts go to paying the authors.
AUTHOR BIOS
Rocco de Giacomo lives in Toronto with his wife, Lisa Keophila, a fibre artist, and his daughters, Ava and Matilda. He is a widely published poet whose work has appeared in literary journals in Canada, Australia, England, Hong Kong and the US. The author of numerous poetry chapbooks and full-length collections, his latest, Casting Out (Guernica Editions) – on the reconciliation of the author’s secular lifestyle and their deeply Evangelical upbringing – was published in April of 2023.
Jamaican-born Bernadette Gabay Dyer is the author of 4 novels, 2 short story collections, and a poetry collection. She is a member of The Writers Union of Canada, Science Fiction Canada and Storytellers Canada. She is also an artist, and recently retired from working at Toronto Public Libraries after 45 years of service.
Cristian Simionescu was born on July 21, 1939 in the Hlipiceni village , Botoșani County, România. Cristian attended the Faculty of Philology, University of Iaşi, where he graduated in 1966, with the thesis “The Prose of Mihai Eminescu.” His first book of poetry, Tabu was published in 1970, by Cartea Româneasca publishing house. This edition was banned for 10 years due to communist censorship. He went on to publish 9 books of poetry, including Maratonul (The Marathon), Ținutul bufonilor (The Bufoon’s Land) and Insula (The island). He became member of the Romanian Authors Association in 1983 and was part of many national literary juries. His work will be read by his son Cristian George Simionescu.
Christian George Simionescu is an architect who has lived in Toronto for over 18 years. In addition to contributing to the editing and publication of his father’s poetry, he has created the website Cristian Simeonescu Poetry and occasionally does readings of his father’s works.
Terri Favro and Ron Edding are co-creators of the Bella graphic novel series. Ron is a visual artist who has exhibited in Canada, England, Chile, Mexico and Serbia. Terri is the author of five books, most recently The Sisters Sputnik, published by ECW Press. Their most recent graphic Cold City is based on cold case in Depression era Toronto. Their work in progress, “Invisible Hero” explores the life and death of one of Favro’s ancestors, an Italian partisan shot by German troops during World War II.Christian George Simionescu is an architect who has lived in Toronto for over 18 years. In addition to contributing to the editing and publication of his father’s poetry, he has created the website Cristian Simeonescu Poetry and occasionally does readings of the works.
Michael Fraser is published in various national and international journals and anthologies. His manuscript, The Serenity of Stone, won the 2007 Canadian Aid Literary Award Contest and was published by Bookland Press in 2008. He is published in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 and 2018. He has won numerous awards, including Freefall Magazine’s 2014 and 2015 poetry contests, the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize, the 2018 Gwendolyn Macewen Poetry Competition, and the League of Canadian Poets’ 2022 Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize. With My Eyes Wide Open, his fourth collection, will be published by Exile Editions in fall 2023.
Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Her work has been published in various literary journals and magazines, including The Malahat Review, Room, CAROUSEL, THIS, The Antigonish Review, Grain, and The Fiddlehead. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, came out Radiant Press in spring 2023 and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in spring 2024. Hollay is the Reviews Editor of the Minola Review, a member of the poetry editorial board of long con magazine, and the Fiction Editor of untethered. She’s currently struggling through writing a novel.
Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann is a Toronto-based editor, writer and children’s book author (My Father’s Nose, 2016). She has worked in media for the last 30 years and is currently with Metroland Media. The fourth-generation Japanese Canadian with German ancestry holds a master of fine arts from the University of King’s College. With support from the Toronto Arts Council, she is completing a work of creative non-fiction – a hybrid of memoir, Japanese Canadian history and cultural arts. The Nail That Sticks Out Gets Hammered In explores subjects from immigrant life, displacement and folk dancing to learning Japanese and anti-Asian racism.
Sofia Mostaghimi is an Iranian-Canadian fiction writer, who’s debut novel DESPERADA is out now with Random House Canada. Previously her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, the Ex-Puritan, Joyland Magazine, and the Hart House Review, as well as various anthologies such as Good Mom on Paper: Writers on Creativity and Motherhood, and After Realism: 24 Stories for the 21st Century. Her excerpt of DESPERADA was long-listed for The Journey Prize, and her story, “The Day You Were Born,” appeared in The Unpublished City, which was short-listed for The Toronto Book Awards. She likes to write about places, spaces, and the identities that mark them and are marked by them.
Tyler Pennock is a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Metis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta. Tyler is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They currently teach in the Indigenous Studies Department at the University of Toronto, and School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013, and currently live in Toronto. Their first Book, BONES (Brick Books) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry, and longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award in 2021. Their second book, BLOOD was released in September 2022.
Elida Schogt is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist whose work mines personal experience, challenges power imbalances, and disrupts story-telling conventions. She is best known for her short documentary Zyklon Portrait, described in The Toronto Star as “elegantly haunting and perhaps the most visually lush film about the Holocaust ever made.”Writing is central to her practice—be it journals, prose poetry, or voice-over narration.She has written one dramatic feature script and recently completed a memoir. Elida haslong preferred English, but still enjoys using one or two untranslatable expressions from Dutch, her first language.
Jade Wallace‘s debut poetry collection, Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There, was released in 2023 by Guernica Editions, and their debut novel, Anomia, is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in 2024. Wallace is the reviews editor for CAROUSEL and co-founder of the collaborative writing entity MA|DE. MA|DE’s fourth chapbook, Expression Follows Grim Harmony, is available now from Jackpine Press.
Julia Zarankin lives, writes, and birds in Toronto. Her memoir, Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder, was a Canadian bestseller and her short story, “Black-legged Kittiwake” was a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize. Julia’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Walrus, Maisonneuve, Canadian Geographic, The New Quarterly, Audubon, Orion, and The Globe and Mail. In 2022-2023, Julia was a Translation Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA and translated Shifra Lipshitz’ memoir Dreams and Reality from Yiddish into English.