Celebrating New and Emerging Writers

And so it begins ... Writer/poet Suzanne Robertson

Poet Lindsay Smail

Poet Dane Swan

Poet Lisa Young

Writer and NSNIG&F supporter Terri Favro

Poet and friend Sonia DiPlacido

The Annex by night ...

Emcee & NSNIG&F co-organizer Giovanna Riccio

War not with May ...

Suzanne Robertson was born in Perth, Ontario. She is a writer and photographer living in Toronto where she also works at the Children’s Aid Society. Her first collection of poetry Paramita, Little Black was published by Guernica Editions in 2011. It has recently been nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award, for best first book of poetry in Canada.

Lindsay Smail is a Creative Director who plies her trade in the distinctly unpoetic world of provincial politics. She holds an M.A. in English Literature from UofT and has studied with Ken Babstock at the Summer Writing School. A frequent reader at the Plasticene Poetry series, Lindsay has finally admitted she wants to be published and is busy editing her work with an eye to submission.

Born and raised in Bermuda to a Bermudian father and Jamaican mother, for Dane Swan, visiting family involved trips to small villages in Jamaica like Yallas and Land’s End, or to New York communities like Crown Heights in Brooklyn. The great story-tellers he heard in these communities were his only literary professors. At 17, Dane moved to Canada with his brother to further their education. Dane’s poetry can be found on CD, 12”Vinyl, MP3, in anthologies and in poetry reviews. Bending the Continuum is his first full-length collection of poetry in print. 

Lisa Young is a Toronto poet and experimental fiction writer. Her first poetry collection, When the Earth, was published by Quattro Books in the Fall of 2011. Her work has appeared in Jones Av., Misunderstandings Magazine, Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, dead g(end)er and Rampike. She is a former fiction editor and senior poetry editor for Existere: Journal of Arts and Literature. Lisa is part of the Quattro Presents WordStage Reading Series Team and co-hosts every other month.

And the emcees ...

Michelle Alfano is a co-organizer of the (Not So) Nice Italian Girls & Friends Reading Series and a Co-Editor with Descant. Her novella Made Up of Arias (Blaurock Press) won the 2010 Bressani Prize for Short Fiction. Her short story “Opera”, on which her novella Made Up Of Arias is based, was a finalist for a Journey Prize anthology. Her fiction and non-fiction work has been widely published in major literary publications. She was featured in a forthcoming documentary on the passengers, and the children of the passengers, of the Saturnia that was recently featured on OMNI-TV. She is currently at work at a new novel entitled Vita’s Prospects.

Giovanna Riccio was born in Calabria and immigrated to Canada as a child. Her poems have appeared in newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies.Her work has been translated into Romanian and a number of her poems are being translated into Italian for an upcoming anthology to be published in Italy. She is the author ofVittorio (Lyricalmyrical Press) and Strong Bread (Quattro Books).

Premiere of Saturnia

SATURNIA 
Written, Directed and Produced by Ferdinando Dell'Omo and Lilia Topouzova  Edited by Juan Baquero 
Director of photography Maya Bankovic 
Original Music by Ivo Paunov  Produced in Association with OMNI Television with the support of  

The Mariano A. Elia Chair at YORK University

Preview the film here ....

More than fifty years ago, over two hundred thousand Italians boarded the glorious transatlantic Saturnia embarking on a journey to American in search for a better future. The documentary Saturnia explores the lives of four of those immigrants. We follow the story of Michelle, an Italian-Canadian author from Toronto, writing a book about her father who left Sicily on the Saturnia. He died when she was sixteen and Michelle sets on a journey into the past to understand who he was by discovering where he came from. By following her research and creative process, we will enter the lives of three of Saturnia`s passengers: Rosa in Montreal, Silvano in Vancouver, and Antonio in Edmonton.Everyday people whose extraordinary stories move and inspire us.They will help us to reconstruct the immigration experience and the challenges that Italians faced during their trip across the ocean, and the ones that followed when they finally arrived in America. Step by step the movie recalls and reconstructs the transatlantic journey between Italy and Canada, but also the memories of small villages in post WWII Italy and the first years of adjustment in the new world.

Immigration is a complex and multi-layered and making of a film about it mirrors the experience itself. In order to capture the essence of the Italian-Canadian immigration story, the documentary Saturnia relied on the collaboration of several key institutions and individuals. . The commissioning of the film and the commercial support, indispensable for its realization, was completed in association with OMNI Television. The academic research and scholarly perspective,crucial for the historical narrative ,was enabled by the Mariano A.Elia Chair at York University. Access to rare archival footage and still photographs which resurrected forgotten moments from a distant past was enabled by the Pier 21 Museum in Halifax and the Fondazione Ansaldo in Italy. The Genova-Liguria Film Commission and DocLab Productions Roma, allowed the shooting and production of Saturnia on Italian soil.

Ferdinando Dell’Omo is an Italian-Canadian documentary filmmaker and journalist. He has worked in the past on a series on ship travel and memory, entitled Navi della Memoria. His work has been broadcast both in Italy and Canada.

Lilia Topouzova is a historian and a documentary film-maker. A Ph.D. candidate at the History Department at the University of Toronto, her work explores the visual and textual representation of violence and its remembrance. She is the recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant of Canada. She is the co-author of the award-winning documentary feature, The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories (dir. A. Paounov) which premiered at Cannes and TIFF in 2007 and won the human-rights award at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

The (Not So) Nice Girls & Friends Celebrate Spring

Allan Briesmaster, poet

Writer José Sigouin

José

Poet Cornelia Hoogland

Cornelia

The multi-talented Rosemary Aubert

Poet Jason Paradiso reading for writer Paul Carlucci

Jason

Poet & NSNIG&F co-organizer Giovanna Riccio

Gio

Emcee & Writer Michelle Alfano

March 2012

Rosemary Aubert has been a fixture on the Canadian literary scene since the day, three decades ago, when Al Purdy chose her as one of only five female poets that he included in his ground-breaking anthology Storm Warning Two. In the intervening years, she has had thirteen books published around the world. Though known primarily as a mystery novelist, Aubert has produced two book-length poetry collections: Two Kinds of Honey, published by Oberon, and Picking Wild Raspberries: The Imaginary Love Poems of Gertrude Stein, published by Sono Nis. Her new poetry collection, Rough Wilderness: The Imaginary Love Poems of the Abbess Heloise, is her first book of poems in a decade.

Allan Briesmaster is a freelance editor, micro publisher, and one of the four partners in Quattro Books. His two most recent full-length poetry collections are Interstellar (Quattro, 2007) and Confluences (Seraphim Editions, 2009), and his newest chapbook is After Evening Wine (Alfred Gustav series, 2011). His poetry has also appeared in many journals and anthologies. He lives in Thornhill, Ontario, with his wife Holly, a visual artist with whom he has collaborated several times.

Woods Wolf Girl (Wolsak and Wynn, 2011) is Cornelia Hoogland’s fifth book of poetry, and is based on the fairy tale, Red Riding Hood – which is also the source for her play, Faim de Loup (Hungry Wolf). Her sixth book of poetry is Crow (Black Moss Press, 2011), and her new chapbook is titled Gravelly Bay (Alfred Gustav Press, 2012).  Hoogland’s recent awards include finalist placements for the 2012 Malahat Review Poetry Competition; Stephen Dunn Poetry Award, The Broome Review (USA); Descant’s Best Canadian Poem; the National Magazine Awards; and five CBC literary nominations. Hoogland teaches at the University of Western Ontario, and founded Poetry London in 2004. Website at http://redridinghood2011.wordpress.com/.

Jason Paradiso is an editor/writer/poet who considers himself some sort of an artist too. His name has appeared in several mastheads, including Carousel, Pilot and Descant where he is a co-editor.

Reading for ...

Paul Carlucci is a journalist and short story writer. His work has appeared in the Vancouver Review, the Feathertale Review, Darwin's Bastards, and is forthcoming in Descant Magazine. His journalism has been carried by Al Jazeera English, Think Africa Press, the Toronto Star and more. He's lived all across Canada, as well as in France and Ghana.

Giovanna Riccio was born in Calabria and immigrated to Canada as a child. Her poems have appeared in newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies.  Her work has been translated into Romanian and a number of her poems are being translated into Italian for an upcoming anthology to be published in Italy. She is the author of Vittorio (Lyricalmyrical Press) and Strong Bread (Quattro Books). 

 

José Sigouin has been at the University of Toronto for most of her working life, first as a lab technician then as a research grants facilitator, and more recently as a data analyst. While her days are spent coaxing numbers into telling factual stories, José shifts gear in the evening, coaxing words into telling fictional ones. She honed her skills through classes led by Ray Robertson, Dennis Bock and Kim Echlin, as well as two writers’ groups spun out of those classes. José was a finalist in the Random House of Canada Student Award in Writing in 2011. She is currently working on her first novel, Intersection.


And as emcee...

Michelle Alfano is a co-organizer of the (Not So) Nice Italian Girls & Friends Reading Series and a Co-Editor with Descant. Her novella Made Up of Arias (Blaurock Press) won the 2010 Bressani Prize for Short Fiction. Her short story “Opera”, on which her novella Made Up of Arias is based, was a finalist for a Journey Prize anthology. Her fiction and non-fiction work has been widely published in major literary publications. She will be featured in a forthcoming documentary on the passengers, and the children of the passengers, of the Saturnia that will be featured on OMNI-TV. She is currently at work at a new novel entitled Vita’s Prospects.

WordStage featuring the Quattro Books Writers

Dooney's Cafe 

(formerly Annex Live) 

December 14, 2011

298 Brunswick Avenue  (south of Bloor)

7:30 pm sharp

FEATURING:

Binnie Brennan’s short stories have appeared in a number of Canadian and American literary journals. Her best-selling novella Harbour View was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, longlisted for the ReLit Award, and was co-winner of the 2009 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. Binnie is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and Queen’s University. Born in Toronto, Binnie lives in Halifax, where she is a violist with Symphony Nova Scotia. www.binniebrennan.com/

Carole Giangrande’s novella, A Gardener On The Moon, was co-winner of the 2010 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest, and is published by Quattro Books. She's the author of two novels (An Ordinary Star and A Forest Burning), a short story collection, Missing Persons), and two non-fiction books. She’s worked as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio, and her fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in Canada’s major journals and newspapers. Between hosting the worldwide literary podcast Words to Go, and commenting as The Thoughtful Blogger, she’s found time to complete a new novella, Midsummer, from which she’ll read at WordStage. www.carolegiangrande.com/

Koom Kankesan was born in Sri Lanka. Canada is the fourth country that he and his family lived and is the one where they settled down. He's a proud Torontonian and has a background in English Literature and Film Studies. Suffering from premature old man syndrome, he's worked at a variety of ill-fitting jobs, most recently and most consistently as a high school English teacher, while trying to write on the side. His novella, The Panic Button, about a family living in Scarborough, has been praised by comic book visionary Alan Moore and largely ignored by everyone else. It has the somewhat dubious honour of being shortlisted for the Scarborough Book Award.

Paul Seesequasis is a writer and journalist. He was the founding editor of the award-winning 'Aboriginal Voices' magazine, and recipient of the Maclean-Hunter journalist award. His short stories and feature writing have been published in Canada and abroad. Tobacco Wars is his first novella.

Hosted by Maddy Curry and Sonia Di Placido. The fun keeps going - join the writers afterwards for the Quattro Christmas party!

A Place in the Spotlight

NSNIG&F co-organizer, poet and 
the night's emcee Giovanna Riccio

Award winning poet Cathy Petch starts the evening

Writer Diane Bracuk read a piece on Warsaw

Writer Bianca Lakoseljac

Poet/Writer Liz Worth

NSNIG&F Co-organizer & 
Writer Michelle Alfano

NSNIG Giovanna at rest

Darlene Madott, writer and NSNIG extraordinaire

Karen and Jane Somerville

Liz and friend

Francesca and Talia, friends of the NSNIG&F

NSNIG&F supporter 
and Poet Valentino Assenza