Previous Features

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Karen Connelly
Dennis Lee
Susan Perly

Karen Connelly
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]

Dennis Lee
Dennis Lee was Toronto’s first poet laureate, from 2001 to 2004. His recent poetry collections are Un and Yesno, as well as SoCool, a volume for younger teenagers. He co-founded House of Anansi Press, wrote the song lyrics for the TV show Fraggle Rock, and is widely known for Civil Elegies and Alligator Pie. He lives in Toronto with his wife, the novelist Susan Perly.

Susan Perly
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.

FROM: 2007/08 SEASON

October 3, 2007 Opening Night! George Elliott Clarke Trevor Cole (fiction) Molly Peacock	November 7, 2007 Carol Malyon (fiction) John Unrau Harold Rhenisch	December 5, 2007 Jonathan Bennett Diana Fitzgerald Bryden (fiction) A. F. Moritz
January 2, 2008 Allan Briesmaster Jessica Westhead (fiction) Carleton Wilson	February 6, 2008 Robert J. Sawyer (fiction) Sarah Sheard (fiction) Priscila Uppal	March 5, 2008 DIFFERENT LOCATION: Brass Taps (934 College St. at Dovercourt) Kristen den Hartog (fiction) Christopher Doda
April 2, 2008 National Poetry Month! Maureen Scott Harris Lawrence Hill (fiction) Adam Sol	May 7, 2008 Stephen Cain Gale Zoë Garnett (fiction) Chandra Mayor Olive Senior	June 11, 2008 (2nd Wed. in June!) The Rowers Read! Ian Burgham David Clink Catherine Graham Ned Hagerman Halli Villegas

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 [opening night!]:

George Elliott Clarke
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.


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.

(artwork by Lara Tomlin)
MOLLY PEACOCK is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems (W.W. Norton), a memoir Paradise, Piece by Piece (McClelland & Stewart), and a one-woman show in poems, “The Shimmering Verge” produced by London, Ontario based Louise Fagan Productions. She is Poetry Editor of the Literary Review of Canada, and a member of the Graduate Faculty of the Spalding MFA Program. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best of the Best American Poetry and The Oxford Book of American Poetry.

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007:

Carol Malyon
Malyon has been writing full-time since 1991. In the 1980s she owned and managed Beaches Book Shop in Toronto, a block away from the lake. She hosted a reading series in the book store. Malyon has four children and five grandchildren. She came to writing late and published her first book in 1990. Nine years later she had nine books in print: a picture book for children, Mixed-up Grandmas; four novels--The Adultery Handbook, If I Knew I'd Tell You, The Migration of Butterflies and Cathedral Women; two short story collections--Lovers & Other Strangers, and The Edge of the World; and three books of poetry--Emma's Dead, Headstand and Colville's People. She edited "Imagination in Action" which is being launched by Mercury Press Tuesday November 13th at the Supermarket, 268 Augusta Ave., 7:30 p.m. She is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada.

Harold Rhenish
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
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:

Jonathan Bennett
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.

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden
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.

A. F. Moritz
A.F. Moritz has published fourteen books of poems, which have earned the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship, selection to the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, and other honours. He has translated seven books of poetry and a novel from Spanish and French, and in collaboration with Theresa Moritz has written biographies of Emma Goldman and Stephen Leacock, and The Oxford Literary Guide to Canada. He holds a doctorate in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British poetry.

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
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
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
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

Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer -- called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by The Ottawa Citizen and "by any reckoning, among the most successful Canadian authors ever" by Maclean's -- is the author of 18 science-fiction novels including the Hugo Award-winning Hominids, the Nebula Award-winning The Terminal Experiment, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning Mindscan, the Aurora Award-winning Flashforward, and the Seiun Award-winning Frameshift. His physical home is Toronto; in cyberspace, he's at sfwriter.com.

Sarah Sheard
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.

Priscila Uppal
Priscila Uppal is a poet and fiction writer born in Ottawa and currently living in Toronto. Among her publications are five collections of poetry: How to Draw Blood From a Stone (1998), Confessions of a Fertility Expert (1999) Pretending to Die (2001) Live Coverage (2003) and Ontological Necessities (2006); all with Exile Editions; and the novel The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002), published to critical acclaim by Doubleday Canada and Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and translated into Dutch and Greek. Her poetry has been translated into Korean, Croatian, Latvian, and Italian, and Ontological Necessities was recently short-listed for the prestigious Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry. She has a PhD in English Literature and is a professor of Humanities and English at York University.

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

Kristen den Hartog
Kristen den Hartog was born in Deep River, a small Ontario town featured in each of her novels. Her second book, The Perpetual Ending, was short-listed for the 2004 City of Toronto Book Awards, and her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including the Journey Prize Anthology. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories, as well as a non-fiction book [The Occupied Garden] that is a collaborative project with her sister, Tracy Kasaboski. Kristen den Hartog lives in Toronto with her partner and their daughter. Information taken from TWUC site: http://www.writersunion.ca/ww_profile.asp?mem=1530&L=D&N=Kristen%C2%A0den%20Hartog

Christopher Doda
Christopher Doda is a poet and critic living in Toronto. His first collection of poems, Among Ruins, was released in 2001 by Mansfield Press and his second, Aesthetics Lesson, appeared in the autumn of 2007.

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
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

Lawrence Hill
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
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
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.

Gale Zoë Garnett
Gale Zoë Garnett is a working actor (all media) since age seven and a published writer since her early teens. Zoë is the author of the critically acclaimed novels, Visible Amazement and Transient Dancing. Her books, essays, poems and stories have been published in Canada, The U.S, the U.K. France and Germany. In 2007 Quattro Books inaugurated it’s prose series with her novella, Room Tone, of which the Globe and Mail says "Do not hesitate to purchase this wonderfully realised, beautiful book…Garnett is a masterly writer. There are elements here of Milan Kundera and Gabriel García Márquez." ‘Room Tone’ is now in its second printing. Zoë has also completed a third novel and a book for young people (9-14), and is working on a first poetry collection and a book of essays.

Chandra Mayor
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.

Olive Senior
As a poet, fiction writer, journalist and editor, Olive Senior is one of Canada's most internationally recognized and acclaimed authors. Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for her fiction collection Summer Lightning and a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for her poetry collection Over the Roofs of the World, her body of published work includes four books of poetry, three collections of short stories and several award-winning non-fiction works on Caribbean culture. She divides her time between her native Jamaica and her home in Toronto. [bio from: http://www.insomniacpress.com/author.php?id=134]