Draft 17.3 August 28 at 3:00 p.m.
A white egret standing in a pool of green lilies with leaves in the background.
Image by Ron Edding, photograph by Terri Favro
We’re looking forward to another wonderful edition of Draft. Aug 28 at 3:00 p.m.
Please join us on a spring Sunday afternoon for some fresh, new writing.
We’re hosting readings by:
John Orpheus aka Antonio Michael Downing
Sheila Madonna Salvador
You can register on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/393301504387
Tickets are available on a sliding scale. Your donations are most welcome but we appreciate your presence most of all! See you there.
Many thanks to Toronto Arts Council, as well as our generous audiences, for funding this reading.
Zoom captioning will be available.
Here are more details about the authors:
Jennifer Alicia (she/they) is a queer, mixed Mi’kmaw and settler (German/Irish/Scottish) multidisciplinary artist originally from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk (Bay of Islands, Newfoundland), now residing in Toronto. She is a two-time national poetry slam champion and collective member of the Toronto Poetry Project and Seeds & Stardust. In 2021, her debut chapbook Mixed Emotions was released and she was also published in Issue 09 of Canthius Magazine and NOW Magazine. They presented their play with the working title Restor(y)ing Identity at the first ever Nogojiwanong Indigenous Fringe Festival in 2021. An audio version of the play was presented at the Weesageechak Begins To Dance 33 Festival in 2020 and at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in 2021. Jennifer Alicia recently edited an Indigenous poetry anthology called The Condor and the Eagle Meet, which was released in May 2022 through Kegedonce Press.
Named one of the most influential disabled artists by UK’s Power Magazine, Alex Bulmer has over thirty professional years’ experience across theatre, film, television, radio and education. She is fuelled by a curiosity of the improbable, dedicated to collaborative art practice, and deeply informed by her experience of becoming blind. She is activated by obstacles, well exposed to the absurd, and embraces the disciplines of generosity, listening, time, and uncertainty within her artistic and personal life. Alex is co-founder and co-Artistic Director of The Fire and Rescue Team, is former artistic director of Common Boots Theatre, and recently curated CoMotionFestival 2022, an international disability arts festival with Harbourfront Centre. She is writer of award-winning BBC radio drama, writer of the Dora- and Chalmers- nominated SMUDGE, and co-writer of the BAFTA-nominated U.K.television series, Cast Offs, featuring six lead disabled actors. Alex earned best actor at the Moscow International Disability Film Festival and recently completed a season as The Friar in R+J at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. She is currently developing Perceptual Archaeology, a new theatre piece which will be produced with Crow’s Theatre in June 2023.
Mugabi Byenkya is an award-winning writer, poet and occasional rapper. He was born in Nigeria, to Ugandan parents and is currently based in Kampala. Mugabi was longlisted for the Babishai Niwe Poetry Award in 2015. His essays, poetry and comics have been published in Carte Blanche, Best Canadian Poetry, and Skin Deep, along over 35 other publications. He has been interviewed on Voice of America, NTV Uganda, and Urban TV along over 65 other media outlets. Mugabi’s writing is used to teach High School English in Kampala and Toronto schools. He won the Discovering Diversity Poetry Contest in 2017. In the same year, his award-nominated debut, Dear Philomena, was published and he went on a 43 city, 5 country North America/East Africa tour in support of this. In 2018, Mugabi was named one of 56 writers who has contributed to his native Uganda’s literary heritage in the 56 years since independence by Writivism (East Africa’s largest literary festival). Dear Philomena, was named a Ugandan bestseller in the same year. Mugabi wants to be Jaden Smith when he grows up.
Carol B. Duncan is a chronicler of human stories of migration, community and identity especially those on the margins of empire. She teaches religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her academic work focuses on trans-Atlantic connections linking Africa, Europe and the Americas in the formation of Caribbean religious and cultural expressions. Carol has curated and co-hosted author events for the university and wider communities. Storytelling has always informed her teaching, public intellectual work and research. She was the recipient of the 2002 Arts Award Waterloo Region for literature. A published author, co-author and editor of several academic books, chapters and articles including This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto, Carol is now exploring fiction writing. Her work-in-progress, Peeny Wally, is a magical realism historical fictional narrative set on an 18th century plantation in the Eastern Caribbean.
Glynis Guevara was born in Barataria, Trinidad. She is a graduate of Humber School for Writers Creative Writing Program and holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) degree from the University of London, England. She was also admitted to the bar of England and Wales and Trinidad and Tobago. Glynis was shortlisted for the inaugural Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. Her novels Under the Zaboca Tree and Black Beach were published by Inanna Publications.
Melanie Mitzner’s Slow Reveal was published by York University’s Inanna Publications on May 3, 2022, a Best of Women’s Fiction Debut 2022. An excerpt of her novel Too Good To Be True was published in the Harrington Lesbian Quarterly. Her screenplay, Zero Gravity, was awarded an Edward Albee Fellowship. A finalist in the Writers Guild East Foundation Fellowships for her screenplay Dodge and Burn, her screenplays In The Name of Love and Out to Lunch were finalists in the Houston Film Festival Screenwriting Competition. She received a fellowship from M.E.T. Theater and was awarded fiction grants from Vermont Studio Center and Summer Literary Seminars . As a journalist, she covered the tech industry, television production and visual effects. Her work appears in Wine Spectator, Gay and Lesbian Review, Vol1Brooklyn, Bloom and San Francisco Bay Times. Interviews and excerpts are on Open-Book, Rainbow Country radio show syndicated and podcast across Canada, Glad Day Bookshop TV and Hasty Booklist. She’s currently working on a controversial new novel The Expat. Events and media can be found on her website. She works in Montréal and New York.
Born and raised in South-Central Trinidad, John Orpheus aka Antonio Michael Downing is a multi-cultural musical artist and published author. For the past year and a half, he had been writing his memoir called SAGA BOY which was published by Penguin Random House Canada on January 19, 2021 and will be launched by Milkweed Press in the US on September 14, 2021. With the book done, John decided to return to music and release a companion album also entitled SAGA BOY. Both the book and the album are based on the same themes: searching for home, family, love and a fly coat to wear when you get there. His recently released single FELA AWOKE (I WILL MISS YOU) is the beginning of this new phase and introduces you to his deeply personal story.
Sheilah Madonna Mortel Salvador was born in the Philippines and currently lives in Toronto- “the place in the water where the trees are standing”. She is a mature graduate student who utilizes art as acts of resistance, to heal and to empower. Her art work is deeply influenced by her experience as a woman of colour and Indigenous Studies major and she facilitates storytelling and spoken word workshops that focus on self love and cultural pride. Sheila is currently working on her novel about the Massacre of Manila and her family history.
The Show Must Go In
By Maria Meindl
This is a cross-posting from my blog. It started out as a post about spring cleaning, but inevitably, my thoughts turned to Draft, as they often do. Opinions expressed here are my own!
Spring cleaning didn’t happen in 2020. Or in 2021 for that matter.
I don’t mean cleaning. I mean cleaning-cleaning. The kind where you dig in under the piles and get rid of the things you don’t need. When you put the things you do need in their rightful places. When it became clear that the Covid pandemic was going to last more than a few weeks, we did one, big rearranging-session, but since then I’ve been living on the surface of things, a visitor in my own house.
This spring, something has changed. On the radio I keep hearing the phrase, “during the … pandemic,” with a little pause to search for a word that sums up everything that happened in the last two years. The pandemic is not over by a long shot, but we are into a new phase. And this spring, it was time for me to excavate.
Behind a curtain in my workroom, I found the paraphernalia of my in-person Feldenkrais practice. There were folded towels and pillowcases, roller, yoga mats, and the gardening pads I and my students use for props. There was the pouch where they used to put cash payments at the end of class. All of them, gathering dust, and (in the case of the yoga mats), crumbling from disuse.
And beneath that, the items the Draft Reading Series used for fifteen years in its live incarnation: the cash box for the book table, the donations jar, the business cards. They were all hastily stashed behind a curtain when, in 2020, the unthinkable happened.
With an excavation of stuff came an excavation of feelings. We cancelled our March 2020 reading. I didn’t let myself feel how hard that was.
Life as an artist had trained me to keep going no matter what. Parents ill? Tough luck, keep writing. Got to move? There are libraries. No time? No excuse.
As an organizer, too. Snowstorm? Sno problem. Show up. Power out? Use candles (leading to the late and sadly missed Stephen Heighton’s “inflammatory” performance in 2008). No staff at the venue? Ask the audience if someone has a Smart Serve license. Venue locked and barred? Take a walk down the street, sound system in hand, and find another one.
In March, 2020 The Show Must Go On was, for the first time in my life, not the right motto under the circumstances.
Opening the curtain in my workroom took me back to a particular phase: the first lockdown, before vaccines were on the horizon, before we understood how this thing was spread. Was it lurking in the recesses of that kale salad? Could a jogger toss it my way, huffing past me on the sidewalk? And was I even supposed to be on the sidewalk? Some people adopted dogs so they wouldn’t get the stink-eye for being outside.
Draft was up and running again in April. Like so many others, we “pivoted.”
Everything got four times as hard and became about a quarter as satisfying, but if health care workers could go to their jobs every day, if grocery store workers could mask up and show up, I as a teacher and event organizer and massively privileged person could show up, too.
Zoom meetings had all the overwhelm of letting dozens of people into my personal space, with all the loneliness of imagining they were congregating elsewhere, without me. I felt, still feel, panicked at the start of every meeting. Rolf said: “You’re safer on zoom than live. You can press ‘end meeting’ or throw someone out at any time.”
Yet these people were in my place of worship, my creative space, my doctor’s office, my bank. Most of all they were in the private space where I connected with friends. When Draft was zoom-bombed, friends in the audience said they would not have known I was nervous. I’m not over it yet.
When I heard about people getting excited about the creative possibilities of online life, I admired them, but that wasn’t me. Creative people: embrace this! Create! I wasn’t embracing. I was making do, and all of a sudden making do felt like something to aspire to. I complained regularly and vocally. I didn’t want the labour of this to become invisible. For me or anyone else.
Draft kept going. I kept teaching. The show did go on, though in another way. The show went in and is still in.
“During the … pandemic.”
“During the pandemic.”
Lately, the pause has been disappearing. “The Pandemic” has taken on the sound of other phases I heard a lot in my childhood. “The Depression,” for instance. I used to watch Shirley Temple movies on late-night television. In one, Paul Revere rides across the sky with a banner declaring “The Depression is over!” That’s ridiculous, I thought. People must have been really stupid back then.
Then there was “The War.” In our white, middle-class household in the 1960s, the source of all suffering and injustice was contained in a single phrase, consigned to the past. Its being over meant nothing bad, nothing really bad, could ever happen again.
Is Covid in the past? The recent “transition,” the “return to normal” has brought much debate on that question. The pandemic has become “politicized,” (as if anything is ever anything else) with opinion divided over whether it’s an ongoing threat.
I believe it is. I believe health-care workers and scientists, but sometimes I want to have a different conversation. Let’s just say it was all over and we knew it was over. I would still not be ready to “pivot” again. I’d still need time. I search for a word, and “transition” isn’t it. As someone easily able to work from home for two years, living with a partner I love, with plenty to eat, lots of space, no kids to home-school, no financial anxieties, “the … pandemic” was still huge. I had to look at everything, everything differently. Those two years have changed me. I need time to integrate the person I became during that time.
With or without the pause, “The Pandemic” is not just a bad dream, from which we all need to wake up. As long as we think of it that way, we never will.
Draft 17.2 May 29 at 3:00 p.m.
We’re looking forward to another wonderful edition of Draft. May 29 at 3:00 p.m.
Please join us on a spring Sunday afternoon for some fresh, new writing.
We’re hosting readings by:
Wanda Taylor
You can register on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/draft-172-tickets-328394214937
Tickets are available on a sliding scale. Your donations are most welcome but we appreciate your presence most of all! See you there.
Many thanks to Toronto Arts Council, as well as our generous audiences, for funding this reading.
Zoom captioning will be available.
Here are more details about the authors:
Gloria Blizzard is a Black Canadian woman of multiple heritages. With deep interests in music, dance, science, race, culture and spirituality, she brings these perspectives to essays, memoirs, poetry, and reviews. Her work has appeared in publications such as CBC.ca, the Globe and Mail, THIS Magazine, HELD, Dance International, Whole Note Magazine, The Conversation, and The Humber Literary Review. Most recently, her essay, “The Year of Jazz” was published in World Literature Today. She has an MFA at the University of King’s College and is working on her first full-length book. Kern Carter is a writer and author whose most recent novel is Boys and Girls Screaming. He is also the author of Thoughts of a Fractured Soul and Beauty Scars. Kern is also a ghostwriter with credits in Forbes, the New York Times, Global Citizen and Fatherly.com, along with having ghostwritten several books. When he’s not penning novels or ghostwriting, Kern creates and curates stories through CRY Creative Group, his content creation brand that specializes in written storytelling.
Kern Carter is a writer and author whose most recent novel is Boys and Girls Screaming. He is also the author of Thoughts of a Fractured Soul and Beauty Scars. Kern is also a ghostwriter with credits in Forbes, the New York Times, Global Citizen and Fatherly.com, along with having ghostwritten several books. When he’s not penning novels or ghostwriting, Kern creates and curates stories through CRY Creative Group, his content creation brand that specializes in written storytelling.
Emily Gillespie (she/they) is a mad and autistic author, disability activist, and professional daydreamer. Gillespie has a BA in Gender Equality and Social Justice an MA in Critical Disability Studies and a certificate in Creative Writing. They have volunteered and worked in the disability community as an activist, researcher, and facilitator for over ten years. Her writing explores themes of memory, identity and mental health journeys. They enjoy working in community spaces and examining individual and collective experiences. Dancing with Ghosts (Leaping Lion Books, 2017) is her first novel. Their poetry and short stories can be found in several journals and anthologies. She is currently drafting her second grant-funded novel about the failures of the emergency mental health system. In her spare time, Emily enjoys reading, walking, dancing, swimming and people watching in cafes throughout Toronto. Emily can be found curled up in her bed full of unicorn plushies dreaming of a more just and loving world for all marginalized and disabled folks.
Tamara Jones (she/they) is a queer Black culture writer and publicist based in Tkaronto. Specializing in arts and entertainment, they work with production companies, festivals and distributors like the South Western International Film Festival, SummerWorks, The Theatre Centre, Warner Bros, Elevation Pictures, and NEON. Their written and spoken words have been featured in and commissioned by a handful of publications including Ephemera Magazine, Adolescent Content, Lithium Magazine, With/out Pretend, Feels Zine, and the Globe and Mail.
A mother of two, Rahela Nayebzadah holds a Ph.D. in the Faculty of Education from the University of British Columbia. Her novel, Monster Child (Wolsak& Wynn, 2021), is nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Her autobiographical novel, Jeegareh Ma (2012), was based on her family’s migration to Canada from Afghanistan.
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He has written three fiction titles, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies. His most recent novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was published in 2018 and became a national bestseller. He graduated from Toronto Metropolitan University’s journalism program in 2002 and spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist and radio host. He left CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career. He lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and two sons.
Raised on a farm in British Columbia, Ann Shin lives in Toronto with her partner and two daughters. Aside from cooking or taking walks, she spends her time writing fiction and producing films and series. Her documentary My Enemy, My Brother was shortlisted for a 2016 Academy Award and nominated for an Emmy. Her previous documentary, The Defector: Escape from North Korea won 7 awards including Best Documentary and Best Documentary Director at the 2014 Canadian Screen Academy Awards, a SXSW Interactive Award, and a Canadian Digi Award. Her book The Family China, (Brick Books, 2013) won the Anne Green Award and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Poetry Prize. Her novel, The Last Exiles, is a finalist for this year’s Trillium Award.
Wanda Taylor is a writer, freelance journalist, and college professor. She is the author of seven books of fiction and non-fiction. Her eight and ninth books are set for release with HarperCollins in 2023 and 2024. Wanda’s magazine features appear in various publications, including Understorey Magazine, Write Magazine, Atlantic Books Today, and Black2Business Magazine. Her essays and poetry can be found in various Anthologies, including Words Gathered – a poetry collection on community, and in the Dark Mountain Essay Anthology in the UK. Currently, Wanda teaches courses in Journalism, Communications, and Story Writing. She also serves as Mentor/Faculty for the MFA Creative Non-Fiction Program at Kings College and was one of the Mentors for the Writers Union of Canada’s first BIPOC Connects program in 2021 – matching emerging writers with established authors for mentorship. Wanda has won awards for her work, including the Women of Excellence Award for Arts and Culture.
Remembering Ellen S. Jaffe (1945-2022), beloved colleague and long-time friend of Draft
By Elana Wolff
Ellen and I were part of the Draft Reading Series group-reading that was held at Farside bar on Gerrard Street in Toronto on July 14, 2019. We both brought ‘mother poems’ to read, though we hadn’t coordinated ahead of time. Our late mutual friend, poet Malca Litovitz, had a word for this sort of thing: “chung”—a serendipitous coincidence that most often occurs between good friends and kindred spirits. Malca and I would often “chung”; Ellen and I “chunged” as well.
Ellen and I met and became friends over poetry. We read together at a number of poetry venues, socialized over poetry, and wrote about each other’s work. The Draft event at Farside was the last time we read together in public and I’m happy to have these photos, which now feel commemorative. The one of us together captures the upbeat mood of the occasion, Ellen’s warmth and our closeness.
When getting together wasn’t possible, we exchanged emails. We exchanged a series of emails in December, 2021 when Ellen told me she was on a new course of chemotherapy. I asked if I could come visit, she said it would be best not to meet up under the circumstances. Unfortunately, the new treatment was not to be successful. Last month, February, 2022, just before I was scheduled to depart for a two-month stay in Tel Aviv, I received an urgent phone call from Bunny Iskov of The Ontario Poetry Society. Bunny told me that Ellen was not doing well and that TOPS would like to set up a memorial award in her honour. We brainstormed and came up with the title, The Ellen S. Jaffe Humanist Award for Poetry, top prize $1,000 for a suite of poems on humanist themes that were dear to Ellen: family, community, traditions and customs, social issues, peace and the effects of war, climate change, ecological issues and the healing power of poetry. See full guidelines here
Bunny, insightfully, wanted Ellen to know about the award that TOPS was establishing in her honour, to vet the themes and guidelines, and to receive a measure of gratification from knowing that her love of poetry would continue on in her name. And this is what happened. Through a three-way exchange of emails, Ellen was fully involved in the setting up of the award and was able to ‘shep some nachas’ (Yiddish for ‘derive pride and gratification’) during a most difficult passage.
On the eve of my departure for Tel Aviv, I asked Ellen if I could visit her upon my return to Toronto at the end of April. This time she agreed, but she must have known that her days were numbered and that our visit would likely not take place. I was deeply saddened to receive the news of Ellen’s passing on March 16th, one day after her 77th birthday. May her soul ascend, may her name and memory be for blessings, and may her poetry and love for poetry live on.
Welcome to the new year and a new Draft Reading!
Welcome to the start of season 17 of Draft Reading, the first Draft of the year!
Sunday, February 27th, 3 p.m. ET on zoom.
Please register through eventbrite.
We’re hosting readings by Carlos Anthony, Samantha Garner, Tyler Pennock and Dharini Woollcombe.
Along with five authors who will be sharing brief readings: Rachel Barduhn, Darynell Beckford, Michaela Jones, Ceilidh Michelle and Sheila Murray.
Please see below for more information about the authors and performers.
Carlos Anthony writes stories and shares experiences that Black men are afraid to write about and are ashamed to talk about. Carlos opens the discussion of the vulnerability men face but hide behind because of the stereotypes associated with that vulnerability. His work has been featured in Cry Magazine and Love & Literature. When he’s not writing articles or short stories, Carlos works on his highly anticipated novel and scripts that detail his testimony.
Samantha Garner‘s short fiction and poetry have appeared in Broken Pencil, Sundog Lit, Kiss Machine, The Fiddlehead, Storychord, WhiskeyPaper and The Quarantine Review. Her debut novel, The Quiet is Loud, is published by Invisible Publishing. She lives and writes in Mississauga.
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 are a Sessional Lecturer in the Indigenous Studies Department at the University of Toronto. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013, and currently live in Toronto. Their first Book, BONES was published in 2020 by Brick Books.
Dharini Woollcombe came on the arts scene as an actress. She got her first big break as a series lead, in the 90-episode television series METROPIA, which introduced the most multi-ethnic television cast ever seen in Canada. She continues to occasionally work on stage, in television, in film, and lends her voice to media projects. Her short story, “Dancing in the Light” is in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul, which is published by HarperCollins Canada. Her humorous article, “Script to Screen in Six Weeks: Do It At Your Own Risk” was published in ACTRA Toronto’s Performers Magazine. As a filmmaker, she co-wrote and co-produced the short film, SEE ME NOW, which won the ACTRA – CINEFAM Women Creators of Colour screenwriting competition and went on to win the African Channel Spotlight Award. It was selected to screen at 11 festivals in the US and Canada, including The Newport Beach International Film Festival, and the Richard Harris International Film Festival, in Ireland. Currently she is creating an experimental piece of theatre about racial identity, (with the support of the Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts). Between writing, painting and voice-over work, Dharini enjoys a part-time practice as a Psychotherapist.
For this afternoon’s reading of Undertone: The Colour of Hate the performers will be:
*Dharini Woollcombe
*Raoul Bhaneja
*Brigitte Solem
*Gabriella Sundar Singh
*The participation of these Artists is arranged by permission of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association under the provisions of the Dance•Opera•Theatre Policy.
Many thanks to the Toronto Arts Council, as well as our generous audiences, for funding this reading.
The Draft series is alive and well … and looking forward to Season 17
Dear friends,
We are on a short hiatus during the fall of 2021 but we look forward to resuming programming in February, 2022.
Here are the dates for the forthcoming season. Mark your calendars!
DRAFT 17.1
FEB 27 2022
DRAFT 17.2
MAY 29 2022
DRAFT 17.3
AUGUST 28 2022
DRAFT 17.4
NOVEMBER 27 2022
With best wishes from
The Draft Team
Please join us for the last reading of Season 16!
Please join us for the last reading of Season 16!
Sunday, July 18th, 3 p.m. on zoom.
Please register through eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/draft-166-tickets-159322962269
This very special event includes spoken word, visual art, improvised music, all together in a literary sphere. Featured writers are:
Andrea Thompson, poet, novelist, editor and educator
Jennifer Hosein , writer, visual artist, and educator
Gloria Blizzard, poet and essayist with saxophonist Michael Arthurs
We will also be joined by four additional very talented writers: Robin Pacific, H. Nigel Thomas, Carol B. Duncan and Eleni Gouliaras.
Please see below for more information about the authors and performers.
Many thanks to the League of Canadian Poets and the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as our generous audiences, for funding this reading.
Carol B. Duncan is a chronicler of human stories of migration, community and identity especially those on the margins of empire. She teaches religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her academic work focuses on trans-Atlantic connections linking Africa, Europe and the Americas in the formation of Caribbean religious and cultural expressions. Carol has curated and co-hosted author events for the university and wider communities. Storytelling has always informed her teaching, public intellectual work and research. She was the recipient of the 2002 Arts Award Waterloo Region for literature. A published author, co-author and editor of several academic books, chapters and articles including This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto, Carol is now sharing her fiction writing. Peeny Wally, a work in progress, is a magical realism historical fictional narrative set on an 18th century plantation in the Eastern Caribbean.
Eleni Gouliaras is a Scarborough poet who graduated from York University’s Creative Writing program in 2012. Her poem Capitalism*2mg was a winner for the 2020 Power of the Poets contest. Her poem Proceed with caution is published on Pamenar Press online magazine. Her writing also appears in Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology, released in April 2021. She is looking forward to appearing in The Quarantine Review in August 2021. Recently, her schedule became much busier, since she is studying to become a Library Technician, but poetry always finds its way into her life.
Andrea Thompson is a poet, novelist, editor and educator. In 2005 her spoken word album, One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award and in 2019 her album, Soulorations helped earn her a Golden-Beret Award for Excellence. Thompson is the co-author of Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, author of the novel, Over Our Heads, and the 2021 recipient of the Pavlick Poetry Prize. Thompson currently teaches through CAMH and the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She is a member of the Brick Books editorial collective and Artistic Director of Brickyard online spoken word showcase. Her upcoming poetry collection, A Selected History of Soul Speak, will be published by Frontenac House as a part of their Quartet series this autumn.
Robin Pacific spent most of the pandemic reading novels and watching Netflix. She took time out between binges to complete a Masters in Fine Art in Creative Nonfiction at Kings College in Halifax, and to write a memoir-in-essays called Skater Girl: An Archaeology of the Self. She has a twenty-five year practice as a visual artist and is new to the contemporary writing world. She’s published essays in The Literary Review of Canada, The Grapevine, and Blank Spaces. She has another Masters in Theological Studies, and a part time practice as a Spiritual Director. Robin watches Netflix in Toronto, and, for which she resides eternally in the circle of shame, Amazon Prime Videos. A lifelong feminist and socialist, she lives on the crux of many contradictions. Privilege doesn’t even begin to unpack it. The essay she will read touches on topics still infra dig to mention in public – menstruation, menopause, and the biggest taboo of them all, old age.
H. Nigel Thomas grew up in St Vincent and the Grenadines and has lived in Quebec since 1968. He is a retired professor of United States literature. He has published dozens of essays in literary journals and anthologies as well as twelve books that include six novels and three collections of short stories. His novels Spirits in the Dark and No Safeguards were nominated for the Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize. His latest novel, Easily Fooled, has been published in 2021. The Voyage, a collection of poems, will be published in 2022. He is the founder and English-language coordinator of Lectures Logos Readings.
Jennifer Hosein is a writer, visual artist, and educator. Her debut collection of poetry, A Map of Rain Days, published by Guernica Editions in September, 2020, was longlisted for the League of Canadian Poets 2021 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her poems, short fiction, creative non-fiction, and a play have been published in magazines in Canada, as well as translated into Hungarian for the anthology Crystal/Kristálykert. Her artwork has appeared on book covers, in magazines, and in solo and group exhibitions in Toronto; it is also featured on the cover of A Map of Rain Days. Born in Montreal, Quebec to Trinidadian parents, she lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. You can view some of her work at YouTube: Jennifer Hosein
Gloria Blizzard, the curator of today’s presentation, is a Black Canadian woman of mixed heritage, with links to the middle passage, surrounded by European culture, living on Indigenous lands of the Americas. With deep interests in music, dance, science, race, culture and spirituality, she brings these perspectives to essays, memoir, poetry, and reviews. Her work has appeared in publications such as, CBC.ca, the Globe and Mail, THIS Magazine, HELD, Dance International, Whole Note Magazine, The Conversation. Her essay, Black Cake Buddhism, appears in The Humber Literary Review this month. She has recently completed an MFA at the University of Kings College and is working on her first full length book.
Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Michael Arthurs, earned his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in composition from The University of Texas at Austin. He is also an alumnus of Humber College, William Paterson University, and The University of Louisville. Dr. Arthurs is a composer, arranger, conductor, musical director and educator and has written extensively for both professional and university jazz orchestral ensembles. He performs in Canada and internationally as a musician, arranger and bandleader and continues an extensive teaching practice.
SURPRISE! One more edition of Draft this season
Please join us for Draft 16.6
Sunday, July 18th, 3 p.m. on zoom.
Please watch this space for more details.
Please register on eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/draft-166-tickets-159322962269
Look forward to seeing you there!
Draft 16.5 May 30th
Please join us on Sunday, May 30, to hear new work by Sonja Boon, Kern Carter, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Mark Laliberte, Sanna Wani and Andrew Wilmot.
TIME:
Sunday, May 30, 3:00 p.m.
Please register on eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/draft-165-tickets-153062013603
Tickets are available in a range of prices (including free). The proceeds will go directly to authors at this and future readings in the series.
The reading will take place on ZOOM.
The link will appear on your ticket and on the email you’ll receive ten minutes before the reading.
Closed-captioning will be available. Please feel free to contact us with your access needs and questions: draftreadings at gmail.com
Here is some more information on the authors:
Sonja Boon is a researcher, writer, teacher, and flutist living in St. John’s. Passionate about stories and storytelling, she is the author of What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home (WLU Press, 2019), a memoir that traverses five continents and spans more than two centuries. Sonja’s creative non-fiction essays appear in published collections as well as in Geist, The Ethnic Aisle, and ROOM, among others. For six years, Sonja was principal flutist and a frequent soloist with the Portland Baroque Orchestra (Oregon).
Kern Carter is a writer and author who has written and published two novels — Thoughts of a Fractured Soul and Beauty Scars. Kern is also a ghostwriter with credits in Forbes, The New York Times, Global Citizen and Fatherly.com, along with having ghostwritten several books. When he’s not penning novels or ghostwriting, Kern creates and curates stories through CRY Creative Group, his content creation brand that specializes in written storytelling.
Ellen Chang-Richardson (she/her) is an award-winning poet, writer and editor of Taiwanese and Cambodian-Chinese descent. The author of three poetry chapbooks, including snap, pop, performance (Gap Riot Press), her writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, untethered magazine, Watch Your Head: Writers & Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Books), among others. She is the founder of Little Birds Poetry, the co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, and a member of the poetry collective VII. She currently lives/works on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg.
Mark Laliberte is an artist-writer-designer with an MFA from University of Guelph. He has exhibited extensively in galleries across Canada and internationally, curates the online experimental comics site http://4panel.ca, and edits the hybrid art/lit mag CAROUSEL. Laliberte has had pageworks, poems and other print experiments appear in publications big and small, including Ink Brick, POETRY, prairie fire, subTerrain and Vallum. Publications include ‘BRICKBRICKBRICK‘ (Book*Hug, 2010) and ‘asemanticasymmetry‘ (Anstruther Press, 2016). He is the recipient of numerous grants, including a Canada Council for the Arts ‘Digital Originals’ grant. Laliberte is a member of the collaborative writing entity, MA|DE.
Sanna Wani lives between Mississauga and Srinagar. Her poems have been published in Poem-A-Day, Arc Poetry Magazine, and Best Canadian Poetry 2020. She loves daisies.
Andrew Wilmot is an award-winning Toronto-based author and editor, and co-publisher of the magazine Anathema: Spec from the Margins. Their fiction has appeared in a variety of places, both online and in print. Further details at andrewwilmot.ca. Their first novel, The Death Scene Artist, is available from Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books.
We are grateful for the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts through the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage through the League of Canadian Poets.
Draft 16.4 April 18th
Please join us on Sunday, April 18 for a chance to hear new and unpublished work by Farzana Doctor, Kamila Rina, Leanne Toshiko Simpson and Christine Tran.
TIME:
Sunday, April 18, 3:00 p.m.
The reading will take place on ZOOM.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Please register on eventbrite and refer to your ticket for the link.
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/draft-164-tickets-148650759423
Tickets are available on a sliding scale (including free). Proceeds go to pay authors at this and other readings in the season.
This reading is part of National Poetry Month, sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets. This year’s theme is RESILIENCE. You can read more about the authors below.
Farzana Doctor is the author of Stealing Nasreen, All Inclusive, and Six Metres of Pavement, which won the 2012 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Farzana is one of CBC Books Ten Canadian Women Writers You Need to Read Now and the recipient of the Writers Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Grant. Her latest book, Seven, was published by Dundurn in 2020. She lives in Toronto.
Kamila Rina is a multi-disabled immigrant Jewish non-binary bi poet, and a sexuality, gender, and disability educator. They have been published internationally, including in Room Magazine, Breath and Shadow, Monstering, Deaf Poets Society, Carousel, Augur, Frond, Mary, and Queer Out There. Their favourite things include trees, books, vegan gluten-free blueberry pie, and radical accessibility. Find them at KamilaRina.com.
Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a Yonsei writer from Scarborough living with bipolar disorder. She is a graduate of UTSC Creative Writing and the University of Guelph’s MFA, and is currently completing an EdD in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. She was named Scarborough’s Emerging Writer of 2016 and was nominated for the Journey Prize in 2019. She currently teaches creative writing at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and InkWell Workshops. Her debut novel, Infinite Snails, will be published in 2022 by HarperCollins.
Christine H. Tran is part writer, part scholar, part gamer, and all female nephew. Among other places, their work has been featured in untethered, Half a Grapefruit, The Temz Review, alt.theatre, and FEEL WAYS. They are a PhD student at UofT’s Faculty of Information and a Junior Fellow at Massey College. Christine targets their tweets for nine specific people at @thechristinet.
Here’s the description put out by the League of Canadian Poets for its National Poetry Month theme.
What does it mean to be resilient? We meet resilience in every corner we’ve been backed into, every hardship that we endure. Resilience is geographical, spiritual, historical. It’s the fight against climate change, the inner battle with mental health, the outcry for human rights and an end to systemic racism. Resilience is the backbone of generations of trauma, the silence at the dinner table, the bow to culture’s violin. Resilience is the courage to start each day anew. This NPM 2021, we celebrate, reflect on and respect the resilience that has made us who we are.
We are grateful for the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts through the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage through the League of Canadian Poets.
