Join Us At Word On The Street!

Word On The Street is only a little over a week away! Diaspora Dialogues invites you to come down to the Harbourfront on September 24th from 11-1pm. Our segment Mapping Toronto: Stories From the Six celebrates this city’s diversity with readings and discussions that focus on different neighbourhoods throughout the GTA. Show up and rep your community. Rediscover Toronto through literature!

We will be located at the Toronto Book Awards Tent seen in the red circle:

Our writers!

CATHERINE HERNANDEZ is an award-winning author and the Artistic Director of b current performing arts. Her plays include The Femme Playlist, Singkil, Eating with Lola, Kilt Pins and Future Folk. Her published works include: M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book (Flamingo Rampant) and Scarborough (winner, Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop Emerging Writers’ Award, Arsenal Pulp Press). www.catherinehernandezcreates.com

ALISSA YORK’s internationally acclaimed novels include Mercy, Effigy (short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize), Fauna and, most recently, The Naturalist. Stories from her short fiction collection, Any Given Power, have won the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award; her essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Brick magazine and elsewhere. York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto.

PHOEBE WANG is a poet and educator based in Toronto. Her debut collection of poetry, Admission Requirements, appeared with McClelland and Stewart in 2017. She is the author of two chapbooks and her work has appeared in Arc Poetry, The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve, Ricepaper Magazine, and THIS Magazine. She currently teaches ESL and last spring coordinated ‘Fuel for Fire’, a professional development event for writers of colour in partnership with the Ontario Arts Council.

IAN KAMAU is a writer, music maker and designer; an artist who believes in the pursuit of actualization, especially by marginalized individuals and groups. Born and raised in Esplanade, a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, to Trinidadian parents who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s,  he is interested in exploring the value of art to society. His parents are documentary filmmakers, his mother a producer, his father a writer and director. He grew up around ideas, social movements, education and all forms of creativity.

SOFIA MOSTAGHIMI lives, writes, and teaches in Toronto, Ontario. Her stories have appeared in Joyland Magazine, The Hart House Review, and various anthologies, among other publications. She is currently working on completing her first novel.

NADIA RAGBAR’s work has appeared in The Glass Coin, Dragnet Magazine, Echolocation, Broken Pencil, and the Unpublished City anthology. She is a graduate of U of T’s M.A in the Field of Creative Writing, and lives in Toronto.

Our host!

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

We look forward to seeing you there!