Welcome to the 45th Tartan Turban Secret Reading featuring Gary Barwin, Deepa Rajagopalan, Tyler Pennock and Charlie Petch. Curated by Gavin Barrett.
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.
Our featured writers will be performing on-site and in person between 7–10 pm on July 24, 2025, at Barrett and Welsh, 577 Kingston Road, Suite #301, Toronto, ON M4E 1R3. The in-person event will be live-streamed and recorded for accessibility. A link will be provided to attendees who register for the live stream.
We do ask that you register if you plan to attend. Tickets are free and reserving a spot helps us track numbers and access funding. Book a free ticket now at Lu.Ma.
Featured writers
Deepa Rajagopalan is the author of the short story collection, Peacocks of Instagram, shortlisted for the 2024 Giller prize, and an Apple Books Best Books of the Year 2024. She won the 2021 PEN Canada New Voices Award for the title story of the collection. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph.
Born in Saudi Arabia, Deepa moved to India as an adolescent, and later to the United States and Canada in her twenties. She is now working on her first novel, We Have Come Empty Handed, about a disparate group of Indian workers in Saudi Arabia, whose lives become entangled, caught in the exigencies of war, deception, and intolerance.
Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist and the author of 34 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984. He has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award and, twice, the League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Award. He has won the League of Canadian Poets’ Lifetime Membership Award, the Leacock Medal and, three times, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. Recent work includes Bird Fiction, an interactive poetry multimedia work (with Sarah Imrisek) featured in Hamilton Arts Week June 2025 and a poetry book and recording with Lillian Allen and Gregory Betts, Muttertongue. Recordings of his work are available at https://garybarwin.bandcamp.com and https://muttertonguetrio.bandcamp.com/ He lives in Hamilton with an evidence-based envy of better poets.
Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/ transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. A poet, playwright, librettist, and musician, Petch was the winner of the Sheri-D Golden Beret Award from The League of Canadian Poets (2020), and founder of Hot Damn it’s a Queer Slam. Petch is a touring performer, as well as a mentor, host, and workshop facilitator. Their debut poetry collection, Why I Was Late (Brick Books), won the 2022 ReLit Award. They have been featured on the CBC’s Q, and was the Writer In Residence for Berton House. Their solo show No one’s special at the hot dog cart debuted in 2024. Their new poetry book Infinite Audition is launching Sept 2025
Tyler Pennock was the inaugural Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences’ Indigenous Artist-in-Residence at Carleton University in Fall 2013. They are a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Metis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta, and is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013. Their first Book, Bones (Brick Books) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry. Their second book, Blood was released in September 2022. They also teach at the Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto.
Open mic
Anyone attending is welcome to read or perform (if you are a musician) in our open mic sessions.
If you are a writer or musician who would like to perform in the open mic session, we ask that you listen in to at least one session to get the flavour of the evening and join in on your next visit.
To participate in TTSR #45, please contact series curator Gavin Barrett. This allows us to line up readers and manage the evening in a way that respects each writer’s work.
The ambience at our readings is intimate, extremely informal and very supportive. Open mic readers are given four minutes in total, including a brief introduction to themselves and their work. 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 these upon finishing their readings.
The Tartan Turban Secret Readings 