Curated by Patrick Connors. Featuring Jennifer Hosein, Stedmond Pardy, Brenda Clews, Paul Edward Costa and Diana Manole.
The Tartan Turban Secret Readings are variously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the League of Canadian Poets and The Writers’ Union of Canada.
Date and Time
7:00 – 10:00 PM EST, Thursday, August 24, 2023. Book your free tickets now, via Eventbrite!
Curator
Patrick Connors’ first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was released by LyricalMyrical Press in 2013 and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Past publication credits include: Blue Collar Review; The Toronto Quarterly 4; Spadina Literary Review; Tamaracks; and Tending the Fire, released in spring 2020 by the League of Canadian Poets. Recent publication credits include: Poetry and Covid; Devour; Lummox 9 Anthology; Canadian Stories; Harbinger Asylum; Silver Birch Press; and Poetry Pause. His first full collection, The Other Life, was released by Mosaic Press in 2021. His newest chapbook, Worth the Wait, was released this spring by Cactus Press.
______________________________________________________________
Featured writers
Jennifer Hosein is a Montreal-born writer, visual artist and educator of Trinidadian and South Asian ancestry residing in Toronto. Her debut collection of poetry, A Map of Rain Days, was longlisted for the 2021 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her poems, fiction and non-fiction and a play have been published in magazines as well as translated into Hungarian for the anthology Crystal Garden/Kristálykert. Her artwork has appeared on book covers, in magazines, and in solo and group exhibitions in Toronto.
Stedmond Pardy is a self-educated, left-handed poet of mixed ancestry (Newfoundland and St. Kitts/Nevis) raised in the Lakeshore Mimico area. His first book the pleasures of this planet aren’t enough was published by Mosaic Press in 2021 and his 2nd, beached whales, will be released in late… 2023.
A Zimbabwe-born Canadian, Brenda Clews is a poet, painter, videopoet, and photographer. Her books are the luminist poems, a chapbook (LyricalMyrical Press, 2013), Tidal Fury (Guernica Editions, 2016) and Fugue in Green (Quattro Books, 2017). Her poetry has been published in print and online journals, Tessera, CrossBridge, Synchronized Chaos, Juniper, and in anthologies. Her artwork has appeared in books, on journal covers, and is in a number of private collections. She hosts Minstrels & Bards, a soirée at the Tranzac Club in Tkaronto/Toronto.
Paul Edward Costa is an award-winning poet, spoken word artist, and teacher. He is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets, a Poet Laureate Emeritus for the City of Mississauga, and a former Director of Toronto’s Art Bar Poetry Series. His full-length poetry collection, The Long Train of Chaos, was released by Kung Fu Treachery Press and his book of flash fiction, God Damned Avalon, was published by Mosaic Press. As a spoken word artist, Paul has featured at many poetry readings online and in person across Canada, such as The Victoria Poetry Project and Shab-e She’r.
Bucharest-born Diana Manole immigrated in 2000 and now proudly identifies herself as a hyphenated Romanian-Canadian award-winning writer, translator, theatre artist, and scholar. She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and has been teaching at Ontario universities since 2006. The winner of the 2020 Very Small Verse Contest of the League of Canadian Poets, her recent poetry was published in English and/or in translation in 13 countries, including Canada, the UK, the US, France, Spain, China, and Romania. Praying to a Landed-Immigrant God / Rugându-mă la un Dumnezeu emigrant (Grey Borders Books 2023) is her seventh collection of poems and her first Canadian book.
_________________________________________________
Open mic
The ambience at our readings is intimate, extremely informal and very supportive. Open mic readers are given 4 minutes in total, including a brief introduction to themselves and their work. They may read any form of creative writing (fiction/poetry/drama/ screenplay) – or a work of reportage or creative non-fiction. The Tartan Turban Secret Readings is not a lecture or motivational speaking series, so no academic or self-help works, please.
There are detailed open mic guidelines posted in our FB group.
Open mic readers who have published works they would like to offer for sale are free to mention it upon finishing their readings.
The Tartan Turban Secret Readings 