Diaspora Dialogues

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Koffler Arts & Diaspora Dialogues Present: In Conversation with Tawhida Tanya Evanson with Sheniz Janmohamed

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DD is proud to partner with Koffler Arts for their latest Book & Ideas event.

Acclaimed Antiguan-Québecoise artist, Tawhida Tanya Evanson, discusses her new novel, Book of Wings, with spoken word artist and author, Sheniz Janmohamed. The Koffler’s Books & Ideas series is thrilled to present the new novel, Book of Wings, by Antiguan-Québecoise artist, Tawhida Tanya Evanson. In this sweeping, allusive novel, the celebrated poet, dervish, and oral storyteller comes to terms with what it means to stand on one’s own two feet in an uncertain world. Tracing a global journey, as a relationship with a lover and travel partner disintegrates, the artist finds herself on a path toward personal discovery and spiritual fulfillment that leads her deep into the North African landscape.

Tawhida Tanya Evanson will join spoken word artist, arts educator, and poet, Sheniz Janmohamed, in a virtual conversation.

Book of Wings can be purchased at A Different Booklist.

TAWHIDA TANYA EVANSON is an Antiguan-Québecoise poet, performer and producer. Author of two books of poetry, Nouveau Griot (Frontenac 2018) and Bothism (Ekstasis 2017), Book of Wings is her first work of fiction. With a 20-year practice in spoken word, she performs internationally and has released several studio albums and videopoems. Evanson is program director of Banff Centre Spoken Word. She has been named Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, and has received the Golden Beret Award for her contribution to the spoken-word genre. Born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, she moonlights as a whirling dervish.

SHENIZ JANMOHAMED is a poet, artist educator, spoken word artist and nature artist. A graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph, Sheniz has performed nationally and internationally for over 15 years, including features at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Aga Khan Museum, and Vancouver Writers Fest. Sheniz has been mentored by authors Dionne Brand, Kuldip Gill, and Janice Kulyk Keefer, and has been published in various journals and anthologies including Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant, CV2 and Quill & Quire. She is the author of two poetry collections: Bleeding Light (Mawenzi House 2010) and Firesmoke (Mawenzi House 2014), and her third collection, Reminders on the Path, is forthcoming with Mawenzi House.

The event will take place on Thursday, April 29, 2021 from 7-8 PM via Zoom.

To register, visit: https://kofflerarts.org/Events/Books-Ideas/Tawhida-Tanya-Evanson-with-Sheniz-Janmohamed

RECORDED EVENT: A Beginner’s Guide to Bookstagram: For Authors and Bloggers

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Join Book Blogger and DD Marketing Coordinator Tiara Jade Chutkhan for a workshop on creating content and growing your Bookstagram page

About this Event

The ‘Bookstagram’ community has flourished on social media over the last few years, creating a unique space for readers and writers. For authors and bloggers, Bookstagram can be a great tool for sharing your work and connecting with like minded readers. With the right approach, there is so much potential this community can bring you— promoting your project, getting it into the hands of readers, creating fun and shareable content or simply enjoying book reviews and gorgeous bookish photos. Join Book Blogger, Writer and DD Marketing Coordinator Tiara Jade Chutkhan for a workshop on creating high quality bookish content, finding your niche and attracting the right following for your Bookstagram page.

Tiara Jade Chutkhan is a writer, editor and researcher born and raised in Toronto. Her love of literature led her to start blogging and sharing her reads, particularly those by Caribbean authors. Tiara’s Indo-Caribbean heritage is extremely important to her and she strives to create representation for her community. Her writing is geared toward exploring the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, its history and culture.

Tiara is the Editor-in-Chief at The Brown Girl Diary and Marketing Coordinator at Diaspora Dialogues. She is a regular contributor for The Brown Girl Diary and Caribbean Collection Magazine. Tiara is also working towards a certificate in Creative Writing from University of Toronto.

Tiara is currently working on putting together an anthology of Indo-Caribbean fiction and developing a short documentary on Indo-Caribbean representation in Toronto.

To view the recording:

DD-TD Black Playwrights Mentoring Program – Broken Windows Reading

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When a fight breaks out on a streetcar, Toronto’s newly instituted broken windows policing strategy leads to a fatal shooting. Two women are forced to deal with the consequences. 

New Harlem Productions and playwright Fiona Raye Clarke present a table reading of her new play, part of the DD-TD Black Playwrights Program.

Performers include: 

Andrea Lynn Carter as Mabel

Leighton Alexander Williams as Eddie

Ryan Ali as Farouk 

Maissa Houri as Nahina

Daniel Jelani Ellis as Rudy

This performance will be ASL Interpreted.
Fiona Raye Clarke is an award-winning Trinidadian-Canadian writer and community-engaged artist. Her writing has appeared online and in print in The Puritan Town Crier, Room Magazine blog, and alt.theatre, among others. Her plays have been produced by the rock.paper.sistahz Festival and InspiraTO Festival, and her co-created short film screened at the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival and the San Francisco Queer National Arts Festival. She is an alumnus of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Diaspora Dialogues Long-Form Mentorship Program. She is the Artistic Director of the Black youth oral history theatre project, INTERGENERACIAL and is currently working on her first full-length play Broken Windows as part of the Diaspora Dialogues Playwrights Mentoring Program.  

To watch the reading of the play, visit the link below:

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/vnhcn7i9?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=profile_web&utm_campaign=profile

DD-TD Black Playwrights Mentoring Program – Table For Two Reading

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In partnership with TD and Soulpepper we present a reading of a new play by Akusoa Amo-Adem, produced as part of our DD-TD Black Playwrights Program.

Table For Two  is a comedic play about a thirty-five year old Ghanaian-Canadian woman on a journey to find an epic love. While waiting at a restaurant for her date to arrive, Abena Ohemaa Frimpong (aka Abby) recounts the different failed and successful relationships she has had in her life; including the one with her very traditional and meddlesome Ghanaian Mother. It is through the retelling of her experiences and confronting past and present wounds that Abby ultimately discovers the epic love she has been searching for has been there all along; it just took one really bad date to see it.

Akosua Amo-Adem is an actor, writer, and director/acting coach based in Toronto. Through out her career Akosua has appeared in a variety of plays around the city. Her selected credits include Obsidian Theatre’s School Girls; or the African Mean Girls Play (Head Mistress Francis), Venus’ Daughters (Venus/Sarah); Soulpepper Theatre’s A Streetcar Named Desire (Eunice), For Colored Girls…(Lady in Green), Father Comes Home From The Wars…(Leader/Runaway), The Crucible (Tituba);  Company Theatre’s Domesticated (Talk Show Host); Canadian Stage’s Tartuffe (Dorine) and Theatre Passe Muraille’s The Middle Place (as Kaaliha/Dee). She was an assistant director on Harlem Duet at Tarragon Theatre and co-directed Shades, a dance theatre piece by Esie Mensah. She is a published author with an article called See Me in Intermission online magazine and appeared on NOW Magazine’s 2019 list of top ten theatre artists in Toronto. She is also a series regular as Stacie on the TV show Kim’s Convenience on CBC gem and Netflix!

To watch the reading of the play, visit the link below:

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/table-for-two?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=profile_web&utm_campaign=profile

Diaspora Dialogues to Launch New Mentoring Program for Emerging Black Playwrights with Support from TD Bank Group

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 Diaspora Dialogues is excited to announce the DD-TD Black Playwrights Mentoring Program, a transformational new initiative that matches four emerging playwrights with four of Canada’s top dramaturges to develop their first full-length play for mainstage production. 

The intensive one-on-one mentorship over six months will enable the playwrights and their mentors to dive deep into work that explores the multifaceted reality of the lived Black experience in Canada and provoke meaningful conversations both within the Black community and within the wider Canadian society.

A nurturing environment is baked into the structural design of this playwright’s unit, including mentorship, peer-to-peer and professional development opportunities. In all DD’s suite of mentoring programs, the organization focuses on supporting writers as they tell their own stories and that of their communities, often tackling difficult subjects such as systemic racism and oppression.

DD will partner with theatre companies Canadian Stage, Obsidian Theatre, Soulpepper and New Harlem Productions to produce this program. Each theatre partner has nominated an emerging playwright to take part, as well as identified the appropriate dramaturge for the work.

As part of Black History Month in February 2021, this program will present digital table readings from two of the plays under development which will be free and open to the public. Additionally, in later spring, all four will have public readings.

There’s been a significant new wave of female, Black theatre artists taking positions of power at theatre companies over the past couple years including Weyni Mengesha at Soulpepper, Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu and Myekah Payne at Obsidian, and Mel Hague at Canadian Stage. DD is fortunate and grateful to work with, and learn from, these stellar artists through partnership on this program.

The DD-TD Black Playwrights Mentoring Program is sponsored by the TD Ready Commitment, the Bank’s global corporate citizenship platform.

“Black playwrights are playing an important role in telling the stories of Black communities in Canada, but systemic barriers have inhibited their progress. TD is thrilled to support Diaspora Dialogues in facilitating the professional development of emerging Black talent in arts and theatre and to help address systemic barriers in the sector,” says Naki Osutei, Associate Vice President, Social Impact (Canada), at TD Bank Group. “As part of our corporate citizenship platform, the TD Ready Commitment, we are proud to support organizations like Diaspora Dialogues in building a diverse and inclusive arts sector across Canada.”

“We’re delighted to add the DD-TD Black Playwrights Mentoring Program to our existing development activities, which have resulted in plays such as The Orchard (After Chekov) by Sarena Parmar, Chicho by Augusto Bitter and dozens of books,” DD president Helen Walsh said. “It is our hope that this program, in addition to helping develop four new major plays, also contributes to forging a life-long connection between the playwright and the theatre company.”

Meet the playwrights and dramaturgs:

Yellow by Kalale Dalton-Lutale follows two artists/lovers trying to make work together while also sorting through their romantic relationship.

Dramaturge: Jay Northcott. Partner theatre company: Canadian Stage.

Blood and Memory by Dainty Smith tackles Lilith and Eve, two Black women, talk about life, sex, shadism, and choices within the Garden of Eden moments before Eve bites the apple.

Dramaturge: Myekah Payne. Partner theatre company: Obsidian Theatre Company.

When a fight breaks out on a streetcar, Toronto’s newly instituted broken windows policing strategy leads to a fatal shooting and two women are forced to deal with the consequences in Broken Windows by Fiona Raye Clarke.

Dramaturge: Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. Partner theatre company: New Harlem Productions

Table For Two by Akosua Amo-Adem is a comedic play about a thirty-five year old Ghanaian-Canadian woman on a journey to find an epic love.

Dramaturge: Tawiah Ben M’Carthy. Partner theatre company: Soulpepper

To follow and support the program journey, follow DD on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn and use #DDTDBlackPlaywrights

7 Things I Learned While Promoting During A Pandemic

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Join four-time author Farzana Doctor for a FREE workshop on using social media, finding influencers, creating and attracting people to your events, asking for help, working with a publicist and more. This workshop will be helpful to any writer working to increase their profile and especially for those with a book contract and who are thinking about how to promote a future book.

Farzana Doctor is the Tkaronto-based author of four novels: Stealing Nasreen, Six Metres of Pavement, All Inclusive, and Seven. Seven has been chosen for 2020 Best Book lists including: Indigo/Chapters, Apple Books, Amnesty International, CBC Books and more. Farzana is also the Maasi behind Dear Maasi, a new sex and relationships column for FGM/C survivors. She is also an activist, part-time psychotherapist and amateur tarot card reader.

*Video Chat link and recording details will be provided with signup.

To register, visit:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/7-things-i-learned-while-promoting-during-a-pandemic-tickets-132199190337

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