Diaspora Dialogues

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Diaspora Dialogues at TIFA 2025

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We’re so excited to be part of this year’s Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA)! Our lineup of panels brings together incredible writers exploring what it means to tell stories of identity, belonging, and community—from reimagining CanLit to examining the impact of war and memory through different genres.

Check out all our TIFA events below and join us in celebrating the voices shaping Canada’s literary landscape.

CanLit at Home in the World | Saturday Nov 1 at 1:30pm

What is CanLit? What is it to be a part of CanLit? Join authors Jinwoo Park and Nadia Staikos as they discuss their works and what it is to be a Canadian-based author who writes about characters in different countries and how their books and books like theirs contribute to the characterization of CanLit.

Moderated by Aparita Bhandari

Writing War | Saturday Nov 1 at 4:30pm

This panel features writers Sanita Fejzić and Jumoke Verissimo, whose works, Blissful State of Surrender and Circumtrauma, examine and parse the impact of war on identity and community in two different genres and two different forms.

The Intimacies of Chosen Families | Sunday Nov 2 at 1:30pm

In their books, Property and Runs in the Blood both Kate Cayley and Matthew J. Trafford write about queer experiences as they relate to chosen families. Join us as they talk about the various themes, such as the complexity of intimacy and interpersonal relationships, that surface when writing about family, chosen or otherwise.

Moderated by Daniel Sarah Karasik

Expanding Black Narratives | Sunday Nov 2  at 4:30pm

Join Terese Mason Pierre and others as they confront and expand society’s preconceived notions around Blackness, particularly as it relates to Canadians. Let’s dig into what that means, how that works, and where we go from here.

Moderated by Zilla Jones

ARCHIVED EVENT: The Shape of You: A Hermit Crab Workshop with Leanne Simpson

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October 28, 2025 | 12:30PM

Register here.

Hermit crab essays have emerged as exciting and generative containers for personal storytelling over the past two decades. As their popularity has grown, these creative pieces have taken the shape of family recipes, instructional manuals, obituaries and other familiar forms, offering a protective space to begin the writing process and a chance to reimagine the cultural expectations of each shape.

As a mad writer, narrating my life has been challenging – both in the sense that I am often writing emotionally difficult stories AND stories that may be less recognizable for those who don’t share my lived experience. I find that working within a “shell” – as I did in my debut novel, Never Been Better, which uses the shape of a romantic comedy to explore mental illness – helps me understand and question the “rules of the game,” whether it’s the guiding structures of family, relationships, illness or even just the choreography of going on a date. It also makes for a very fun reading experience for those outside the story!

My hermit crab writing workshop is open to anyone trying to tell a “difficult” story in a creative and nonlinear way (fiction or nonfiction). No writing experience required – just life experience that you’re interested in reframing creatively. 

About the Presenter

Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a Japanese Canadian writer, educator and psychiatric survivor from Toronto. She loves writing joyful and messy stories about living with mental illness, and the moments of hope that help us get out of bed day after day. Leanne teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and her debut novel Never Been Better recently won the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Romance.

ARCHIVED EVENT: The Art Of The Graphic Novel With Ashley Hasfal

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September 24, 2025 | 12:30pm EST

Ever dreamed of creating your own graphic novel? This workshop walks you through the full journey—from brainstorming concepts and shaping narratives, to drafting panels and refining your final pages. Perfect for beginners and aspiring creators, you’ll leave with the confidence and practical steps to turn your ideas into compelling illustrated stories.

Register here.

About the Presenter

Ashley Hasfal is a professional 2D Artist based in Toronto, ON. As a graduate of the Sheridan College Bachelor of Applied Arts Animation program, she trained to hone her craft and build her visual style in 2D TV animation, design and Illustration. In 2024, she ran a Building Character Designs for Comics workshop with the Mississauga Comic Expo. She held a graphic novel masterclass for artists with the Brampton Arts Organization in 2023. In 2021 she held a graphic novel masterclass for writers with Diaspora Dialogues, and she was a mentor with Project 10’s Line Up! Youth Comics Arts Mentorship Programme to help Black LGBTQIA youth build their artistic skills in comics in 2020. Ashley’s current focus in comics and graphic novels is rooted in the supernatural, highlighting Caribbean mythology.

ARCHIVED EVENT: Writing Historical Fiction With Anna Maxymiw

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August 11, 2025 | 12:30pm EST via Zoom

Join Anna Maxymiw to discuss the specifics of writing about history, including: the differences between historical fiction and a historical novel, the breadth of research needed for a project, and how to balance maintaining historicity and avoiding harmful power structures

Register here.

About the Presenter

Anna Maxymiw lives in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Hazlitt Magazine, Maclean’s, and The Washington Post, and has won a National Magazine Award. Her memoir, Dirty Work, won the 2020 Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Award for Nonfiction. Her debut novel, Minique, was published in 2022.

ARCHIVED EVENT: Mastering Imagery: A Creative Writing Workshop with Denise Da Costa

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August 19, 2025 | 12:30pm EST via Zoom

Immerse yourself in the art of storytelling with our creative writing workshop, where sensory details and vivid descriptions take center stage. Whether you’re a budding writer or a seasoned storyteller, this workshop will guide you on how to craft memorable images and descriptions that will captivate and linger with your readers long after the story ends.

Register here.

About the Presenter

Denise Da Costa is a Canadian artist, and author of the 2024 Toronto Book Award long-listed novel, And the Walls Came Down (Dundurn Press, 2023). Her work has been featured in Existere Journal, and the Coach House Press anthology, Subdivided: City Building in the Age of Hyper-Diversity. She studies Creative Writing at UBC and lives in the Niagara region.

ARCHIVED EVENT: Meet the Playwrights!

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Join us on Monday evening and Meet the Playwrights! While playwright mentoring has been a part of DD’s suite of programming since the beginning, for the last 5 years we have been running a successful partnership with TD and theatre companies in Toronto amplifying the voices of emerging black playwrights. Meet this year’s four participants in our DD/TD Black Playwrights Mentoring Program, learn about what inspires them, and the long road from initial script idea to fully produced play that they have set out on. Hosted by April Leung of Theatre Passe Murraile, one of our theatre partners.

About the Participants

Alten Wilmot is a playwright, producer, and multidisciplinary artist based in the Waterloo Region and Toronto. Their work amplifies the voices of second-generation Caribbean, Queer, and MAD communities, centering stories that find meaning in the unresolved through comedy and messy emotions. Alten is the founder of Unwrap Theatre, and has worked independently on over 50 projects across Canada and internationally, working with institutions like CBC, Global TV, Harbourfront Centre, NBCUniversal, and Theatre Passe Muraille. 

Their work explores vulnerability and authenticity, bringing humour to heartbreak and grace to chaos. Alten has been recognized with a Buddies in Bad Times Queer Emerging Artist Award, an ArtworxTO Emerging Artist Award, and a Waterloo Region Arts Award. They have held residencies at The National Ballet of Canada, Obsidian Theatre, MT Space, among others. 

In 2025, Alten premiered their play, My Life in Colour, with Unwrap Theatre to public and private venues across the Waterloo Region. Their next play, a comedy about the biracial experience, is set to premiere in fall 2026.

Kendelle Parks (she/her) is an actor, playwright, and director, based in the GTA. She holds a BFA in Performance Acting from Toronto Metropolitan University and loves theatre that uses stylized or heightened language, portrays morally grey characters, and subverts expectations. She approaches her writing through a lens of humour, often embracing the silly and absurd. Recent writing and directing credits include INSERT CLOWN HERE (Parlous Theatre), which toured to four Fringe Festivals across Canada and had a sold-out run at Toronto Fringe, winning The Spirit of The Fringe award.

Lili Robinson (she/they) is a theatre artist, poet and facilitator born and raised on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories. Heavily inspired by Afrofuturism, Black feminism, and queer theory, her work is rooted in theatre’s potential as an agent of collective healing and political transformation. Lili has worked with theatre companies across the country as a playwright and performer, and has won multiple awards for her playwriting, including the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s John Palmer Award, recognizing a new generation playwright dedicated to making art that agitates the status quo. Other hats they’ve worn in recent years include: Community Engagement Producer for Playwrights Theatre Centre and the frank theatre; Resident Curator at rEvolver Festival; and dramaturg for the Parallel Project, supporting emerging BIPOC playwrights to develop new work. As a poet, Lili has been featured as part of the Vancouver Writer’s Festival, Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival’s Queerotica and Futurosity in the Midst of History events, and online as part of Brick Books’ Brickyard online platform.

Pierrette Walker believes in the embodied stories within, around, beside and beneath. She seeks to hold space for their possibilities, illuminating their testimonies through words, rhythm and rhyme. She is coming into her artistic voice, an evolution of radical self-love. Widowed while pregnant in the height of COVID, Pierrette is on a journey to magnify the experiences of racialized peoples experiencing loss. She believes in the vulnerable power of taking space in all of your phases of being and healing. By day, she is an Educator and at night, she morphs into Dino-Mom or whatever toddler adventures her son invites her into. She is an ‘Awkward Butterfly’ – Mahogany Sunshine, making ripples in her dance with life.


April Siutong Leung 梁筱彤 (she/her) is an award-winning playwright, performance creator, and actor who grew up in Hong Kong and is now based in Tkarón:to (Toronto). She has worked with, and performed at, many celebrated theatre companies across Turtle Island including Theatre Passe Muraille, Blyth Festival, Factory Theatre, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, and fu-GEN Theatre. April’s creative practice extends into playwriting and digital media works. She is currently the Associate Artistic Director at Theatre Passe Muraille.

We would like to thank TD for their ongoing support of this program!

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