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.