Rowers is celebrating the successful end of our 6th season with our annual Directors Reading. Come out to the Victory Cafe for a special night of free snacks & readings by the Rowers Team: Sue Bowness, Kate Dawson, Catherine Graham, Megan Swaine & Heather J Wood, plus our special guests – former directors Ian Burgham, David Clink & Ned Hagerman.
A warm summer welcome to our June readers, same Victory time, same Victory place…
JUDY FONG BATES is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection, China Dog and Other Stories, and the novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café, which was an American Library Association Notable Book and a winner of the Alex Award for cross-over fiction. It was the chosen book for Portland, Oregon’s 2007 Everybody Reads campaign and in 2011 it was featured in Toronto for its One Book Community Read. Her latest work, The Year of Finding Memory, a family memoir, was a Globe and Mail Best 100 Book for 2010.
ALLAN BRIESMASTER is a freelance editor, micro publisher, and one of the partners in Quattro Books. He is the author of six full-length poetry collections and six shorter books. The most recent of these is Against the Flight of Spring (April, 2013). Allan’s poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, and he has read his work at venues from Victoria to St. John’s. He lives in Thornhill, Ontario, just north of Toronto.
KIRSTY ELLIOT lives on a Lasqueti Island homestead with her husband and two little children. Her first book of poems True (Leaf Press, 2011) has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. She wrote the lyrics for “Humminah”, and “Goodbye To A Boy” with Kim Barlow, and was the muse in “Fairy Wings”. She read poems at the 2011 Whitehorse Poetry Festival, and then sped to the hospital to help deliver her best friend’s baby, whose water burst at the reading! She turned her first chapbook into a movie, The Night My Creampuffs Fell.
LAURA LUSH Carapace is Laura Lush’s fourth book of poetry. She has also written a collection of short stories, Going to the Zoo. Recently she completed a book on her father’s life spent on the farm and the dismantling of his barns, which will be published in 2014. She teaches creative and academic writing at the School of Continuing Studies, University of Toronto.
Spring is here (on the calendar anyway) and so are some fine writers – come and hear them read on May 6th at the Victory Café at 7:30 pm.
STEPHANIE BOLSTER’s first book, WHITE STONE: THE ALICE POEMS, won the Governor General’s Award and the Gerald Lampert Award in 1998. Her work has also received the Bronwen Wallace and Archibald Lampman awards and has been translated into French, Spanish, and German. She edited THE BEST CANADIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH 2008 and THE ISHTAR GATE: LAST AND SELECTED POEMS BY DIANA BREBNER, and co-edited PENNED: ZOO POEMS. Her fourth book, A PAGE FROM THE WONDERS OF LIFE ON EARTH, appeared with Brick Books in fall 2011. Born in Vancouver, she teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal.
Halifax based poet SUE GOYETTE has published three collections of poetry, THE TRUE NAMES OF BIRDS (1998) UNDONE (2004), outskirts (2011) and a novel, LURES (2002). Goyette received both the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 2012 for outskirts and is also the recipient of the 2008 CBC Literary Prize for Poetry, the 2010 Earle Birney Prize and the 2011 Bliss Carman Award. Her work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Gerarld Lampert Memorial Award and the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. Goyette teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Dalhousie University and works part-time at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.
RICHARD SCARSBROOK is the author of the books CHEESEBURGER SUBVERSIVE, FEATHERLESS BIPEDS, DESTINY’S TELESCOPE, and THE MONKEYFACE CHRONICLES. He has three new books forthcoming: a poetry collection called OUTTAKES (Turnstone Press), and two novels, NOTHING MAN AND THE PURPLE ZERO (Cormorant Books) and THE INDIFFERENCE LEAGUE (in 2014 with Dundurn). His books have been short-listed for the CLA Book of the Year Award (twice), the Stellar Book Prize, and ReLit Award, and the OLA White Pine Award (twice), which he won in 2011. His prize-winning poems and short stories have been published widely. http://www.richardscarsbrook.com.
LIZ ZETLIN, award winning poet and filmmaker, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently: THE PUNCTUATION FIELD (Black Moss Press). She was Owen Sound’s inaugural poet laureate and is co-founder/former artistic director of the Words Aloud Spoken Word Festival and director of the Words Aloud documentary (www.wordsaloud.ca). She lives in Owen Sound, ON.
Rowers welcomes a fabulous crop of spring writers to the usual place and time of Victory Café at 7:30pm on April 1st. Here are their bios:
FARZANA DOCTOR is a Canadian novelist and social worker. She has published two novels to date, and won the 2011 Dayne Ogilvie Grant from the Writers’ Trust of Canada for an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer. Her second novel, SIX METRES OF PAVEMENT, was the winner of the 2012 Lambda Literary Awards in the category of lesbian fiction. Born in Zambia to Muslim expatriate parents from India, her family immigrated to Canada in the early 1970s. In addition to her writing career, Doctor works as a psychotherapist and coordinates a regular reading series in Toronto’s Brockton Village neighbourhood.
STAN ROGAL’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in Canada, the US and Europe. He is the author of 4 novels, 3 story and 10 poetry collections. His latest is a book of haiku titled: LOVE’S NO WAY TO and is a tribute to American writer Richard Brautigan.
Stan is also a playwright with a new piece awaiting judgment by the SummerWorks committee—pray for me! He was never Prince Hamlet nor was he meant to be; full of high sentence, a bit obtuse, almost ridiculous — almost, at times, the Fool.
BARRY WEBSTER is a Montreal-based writer, musician, and translator. His first book THE SOUND OF ALL FLESH won the ReLit Award for best collection of short stories published by an independent Canadian press in 2005. His fiction has also been shortlisted for the National Magazine Award, the CBC-Quebec Prize, and the Hugh MacLennan Award. His first novel, THE LAVA IN MY BONES, has just been published by Arsenal Pulp Press. The book has been called the first of its kind: “an ecological magic-realist fable.”
Time to pencil some great new readers into your calendar with our fun March lineup. First Monday of the month at the Victory @7:30, be there or be square!
Photo credit: City of Toronto
ANDREW J. BORKOWSKI’s critically acclaimed debut short story collection, COPERNICUS AVENUE, published by Cormorant Books, won the 2012 Toronto Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2012 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for short fiction. His work has been published in GRAIN, THE NEW QUARTERLY, DRAGNET, and in STORYTELLER magazine.
His short story “Twelve Versions of Lech” was a finalist for the 2007 Writer’s Trust/McClelland and Stewart Journey Prize. Andrew’s arts, travel, and human interest journalism has appeared in publications including THE GLOBE AND MAIL, THE CANADIAN FORUM, QUILL & QUIRE, TV GUIDE, AND THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.
NYLA MATUK is the author of the poetry chapbook ONEIRIC and a first-full length collection of poetry, SUMPTUARY LAWS, which was named a National Post best poetry book of 2012. Her poems have appeared in MAISONNEUVE, THE WALRUS, CANADIAN NOTES AND QUERIES, ARC POETRY, PRISM, THE LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA, THE BEST CANADIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH 2012, and elsewhere. Last year, two of her poems were shortlisted for the inaugural WALRUS Poetry Prize.
KARLEEN PENDLETON JIMENEZ is a writer and professor at Trent University. Her two books ARE YOU A BOY OR A GIRL? and HOW TO GET A GIRL PREGNANT were both Lambda Literary finalists. The first is a children’s book chronicling the adventures and challenges of being of tomboy. The second is a memoir about trying to get pregnant as a Chicana, butch, dyke. She has published numerous short stories and personal essays about lesbian desire, Latina ethnicity, and transgressive gender experience. Her award-winning film TOMBOY, has been screened around the world.
CARMINE STARNINO has published four critically acclaimed volumes of poetry for which he has won numerous awards, including the Canadian Authors Association Prize and the A.M. Klein Award. He is the author of A LOVER’S QUARREL, a collection of essays on Canadian poetry, and the editor of THE NEW CANON: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CANADIAN POETRY. His last poetry collection, THIS WAY OUT (2009), was nominated for a Governor-General Award for Poetry. He is the 2012 editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English and his new book of literary criticism, LAZY BASTARDISM, was released in Fall 2012. He lives in Montreal, where he is poetry editor for Vehicule Press and senior editor for Reader’s Digest Canada.
Avoid the February blahs by coming out to hear some great readers! As usual they will be the first Monday of the month (that’s Feb 4th) at the Victory Café @7:30! Mark your calendars, here’s our fab lineup:
SHAUGHNESSY BISHOP-STALL’s first book was an account of the year he spent in deep cover, living with the homeless in Toronto’s infamous Tent City. DOWN TO THIS: SQUALOR AND SPLENDOUR IN A BIG-CITY SHANTYTOWN was nominated for the 2005 Pearson Writers’ Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize, the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, the Trillium Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. The following year, he was awarded the Knowlton Nash Journalism Fellowship at Massey College and also played the role of Jason – a bad-mannered, well-dressed journalist – on CBC-TV’s The Newsroom. He currently teaches writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. GHOSTED is his first novel.
DANI COUTURE is the author of three books: Good Meat (Pedlar Press), Sweet (Pedlar Press), and Algoma (Invisible Publishing). Sweet was named one of Maisy’s Best Books of 2010 by Maisonneuve Magazine and nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; it also won the ReLit Award for poetry. In 2011, Dani also received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Grant.
PETER DUBE is a freelance writer, translator, art critic, and cultural journalist. His novel, THE CITY’S GATES, was named to the OUT IN PRINT: QUEER BOOK REVIEWS best of 2012. A former president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, his previously published works include HOVERING WORLD (2002), AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SKY (2007), and SUBTLE BODIES (2010). Dubé resides in Montreal.
