Events

Diaspora Dialogues Returns to Nuit Blanche 

Due to the success of Women on the Wall at Nuit Blanche last year, Diaspora Dialogues is proud to officially announce we will be returning on Saturday, October 1 for 2016! This year will feature NY-based, Canadian artist Alex Sheriff will illuminate the Artscape at 401 Richmond Street with an ecological video installation depicting the necessity of treating all matter with the same respect and care we reserve for humans. Explore how the various people, infrastructure, animals and minerals within our city are equal and how this in the process creates one cohesive and livable organism in which we all thrive in.

Also, check out Alex’s official website and Tumblr for some fantastic art that will quench your appetite until Nuit Blanche and maybe even provide a sneak peek for what’s to come!

---

Diaspora Dialogues is thankful for its generous sponsors and donors:

On Sunday, September 25^th, from 3 to 5 pm, Diaspora Dialogues is participating in the Word On The Street Toronto Festival! Hosted by Aparita Bhandari and featuring Judy Fong Bates, Marjorie Chan, George Elliott Clarke, and Cherie Dimaline, this year’s panel will explore the multifaceted question: How would one write Toronto in the future? Based on the city’s current trajectory, would a book or a play taking place in 2030 or 2040 Toronto be a dystopian piece or utopian? What characterizes each fate in the context of the city? Our panel will also have an interactive component, allowing audience members to partake — in which a select few will have the chance to write a paragraph to be critiqued by the panelists.

---

Panelists 

Judy Fong Bates is thrilled to be a part of Toronto’s Word on the Street, 2016. Her latest work, The Year of Finding Memory, a family memoir, was a Globe and Mail Best 100 Book for 2010. She lives with her husband on a farm outside of Campbellford. They are both devoted gardeners and enthusiastic hikers.

Marjorie Chan is a theatre artist based in Toronto.  She is the recipient of a Dora Award in performance as well as the prestigious K.M. Hunter Artists’ Award. Her acclaimed drama China Doll was nominated for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Production (Dora Awards) as well as short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Chan has been Playwright-in-Residence for Theatre Direct Canada as well as Playwright-in-Residence and Associate Artistic Director for Cahoots Theatre Projects. In addition to her writing and performing, Chan runs Crossing Gibraltar, a theatre training and outreach program for youth from refugee and newcomer backgrounds.

The 4^th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and 7^th Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke is a revered poet. Now teaching African-Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, Clarke has taught at Duke, McGill, the University of British Columbia, and Harvard. He holds eight honorary doctorates, plus appointments to the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada. His recognitions include the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the Premiul Poesis (Romania), the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.

Cherie Dimaline is a Metis author and editor who’s award winning fiction has been anthologized internationally. Her first book, Red Rooms was published in 2007 and her novel, The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy was released in 2013. In 2014, she was named the Emerging Artist of the Year, Ontario Premier’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts, and the first Aboriginal Writer in Residence for the Toronto Public Library. Her latest book, A Gentle Habit is the August 2016 selection for the All Lit Up summer book club. A new young adult novel, The Marrow Thieves, is forthcoming from Cormorant Books in spring 2017.

Aparita Bhandari is a graduate of the University of Toronto and she is currently an arts reporter based in Toronto.

---

Diaspora Dialogues is thankful for its generous sponsors and donors:

Diaspora Dialogues is proud to announce our presence at the second annual Camp Wavelength, Toronto’s only music festival to offer overnight camping! From August 19 to 21, come explore a huge array of musical acts, from indie rock to hypnotic psychedelic, on the beautiful Toronto Island at Artscape Gibraltar Point. Stay overnight and embrace the festival spirit for days on end as nonstop music plays all around you.

As part of the festival, Diaspora Dialogues is hosting a Literary Fortune Telling event where our very own wickedly talented writers will call upon the stars (of great books) to answer any burning questions you may have about the future. There will be crystal balls, tarot cards, and stories older than everyone in attendance – the perfect companion to the madness of a three-day music festival!

There will be delicious food and drinks available for purchase, as well as art installations and performances by creative artists from around the world such as Cloud Nothings, Operators and Young Galaxy, to name a few.

For more information and tickets, head on over to http://www.wavelengthmusic.ca/events/camp-wavelength/

---

FORTUNE TELLERS

Sheniz Janmohamed

Sheniz Janmohamed is an author, artist educator and spoken word artist. She has performed nationally and internationally for over 10 years and has been featured at various venues including the Jaipur Literature Festival, TedxYouth@Toronto, and the Aga Khan Museum. She is also the author of two collections of poetry: Bleeding Light (Mawenzi House, 2010) and Firesmoke (Mawenzi House, 2014). Sheniz facilitates creative writing workshops for writers of all ages and is a Mentor-Artist at The Royal Conservatory in Toronto. www.shenizjanmohamed.com

Ibi Kaslik

Ibi Kaslik is an internationally published novelist, freelance writer, editor and teacher. Her most recent novel, The Angel Riots, is a rock n’ roll comic-tragedy and was nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Award in 2009. Her first novel, Skinny, was a New York Times Bestseller, was nominated for the Best Young Adult novel of the year by the Canadian Library Association (2004), as well as the Borders’ Original Voices Award for Young Adult Novel (2006). Skinny has also been published in numerous countries. A native of Toronto, Ibi teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies and works as an arts educator. Ibi has helped write, mentor and publish award-winning books for Inhabit Media, an independent Arctic publisher, based in Iqaluit and Toronto. She has a Masters in English literature and Creative Writing from Concordia University and travels to the Arctic from time to time.

Alexandra Leggat

Alexandra Leggat is the author of novel The Incomparables, and the short story collectionsAnimal, Meet Me in the Parking Lot, Pull Gently, Tear Here and a book of poems, This is me since yesterday. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, runs the publishing house Two Wolves Press and is at work on her new novel We Are Not The Fischers.

Andrea Thompson

Andrea Thompson is a poet, novelist, teacher, activist and mentor who has read and performed her work at venues across North America and overseas for the past twenty-two years. Thompson is the co-editor of the anthology Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out, the author of the poetry collection Eating the Seed, and creator of the Urban Music Award nominated CD, One. Thompson is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA Creative Writing program, and currently teaches Spoken Word through the Ontario College of Art and Design Continuing Studies and Creative Writing through Workman Arts. Thompson has recently released her critically acclaimed debut novel, Over Our Heads with Inanna Publications.  www.andreathompson.ca

---

Diaspora Dialogues is grateful to its supporters and funders who make events like this possible: