Welcome to the 47th Tartan Turban Secret Reading featuring Bänoo Zan, Cy Strom, Veena Gokhale, Kateri Lanthier, Lynn Tait and Michael Fraser. 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 Friday, September 26th, 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
Bänoo Zan is a poet, translator, essayist, and poetry curator, with over 300 published pieces and three books including Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse and brave poetry open mic series (inception 2012). The monthly series bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions. Bänoo, along with Cy Strom, is the co-editor of the anthology Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution. Bänoo is the recipient of the 2025 Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award.
Cy Strom works professionally as an editor. He holds MA and MPhil degrees from Columbia University in early modern European history and has published in academic and other areas, including a chapter in the dazzling art monograph Oscar Cahén. He edits in different genres and sometimes languages, and has had a role in developing professional editorial standards and educational materials. A draughtsman and painter, for years he ran a drop-in session at an art studio. He is the co-editor of the anthology Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution.
Veena Gokhale, an immigrant shape shifter, has worked as a journalist, teacher, literary curator, and in the non-profit sector. She has also given Indian vegetarian cooking classes in French and English. She has published three works of fiction — Bombay Wali and Other Stories, Land for Fatimah, a novel (Guernica Editions, 2013 & 2018), and Annapurna’s Bounty, Indian Food Legends Retold (Dundurn Press, 2025). Annapurna’s Bounty was included in several recommended reading lists by the CBC and others. Having lived in ten cities across three countries, she now calls Tiohtià:ke-Montréal home. Visit her at www.veenago.com
Kateri Lanthier is the author of Reporting from Night (Iguana, 2011) and Siren (Véhicule, 2017), longlisted for the 2018 Pat Lowther Award. She won the 2013 Walrus Poetry Prize and was a winner in the Troubadour Competition, UK. Her poems have been published in Canada, the United States, and England, and included in six anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry 2014 and Mirrors and Windows: East-West Poems (ed. Anna Yin, Guernica, 2021). She has taught Creative Writing in the English and Drama Dept. at the University of Toronto Mississauga and is a Mentor in the MA in English in Creative Writing, U of T. Kateri teaches Poetry and Creative Writing courses in the School of Continuing Studies, University of Toronto.
Lynn Tait is an award-winning poet/photographer born in Willowdale. She’s been an Air Force brat in Trenton, lived in Richmond Hill and was a Rochdale resident, before settling down in Sarnia, Ontario. Her poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, Vallum, FreeFall, Literary Review of Canada, Quarantine Review, Prairie Fire, Anti-Heroin Chic, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Muleskinner Journal, Last Leaves and in over 100 North American anthologies. Her photographs have been exhibited locally, her photo art graces the covers of nine poetry books, published in Art Ascent, Still Point Arts Quarterly and featured in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge. She’s the author of the poetry collection You Break It You Buy It (Guernica Editions 2023).
Michael Fraser is published in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 and 2018. He has won numerous awards, including Freefall Magazine’s 2014 and 2015 poetry contests, the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize, the 2018 Gwendolyn Macewen Poetry Competition, and the League of Canadian Poets’ 2022 Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize. His latest book is With My Eyes Wide Open (Exile Editions 2023).
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 #47, 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 