Welcome to our 50th Tartan Turban Secret Reading curated by Priya Ramsingh. Featuring Sonal Champsee, KIRBY, Rajinderpal S. Pal, the work of Anahid Hagopian read by her daughter Antonia Swann, and Stephanie Wyeld. Friday, August 21, 2026, from 7 to 10 PM 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.
The Tartan Turban Secret Readings are variously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the League of Canadian Poets, The Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council and The Writers’ Union of Canada.
Featured writers
Our curator Priya Ramsingh is a writer and photographer. Her first book, Brown Girl in the Room was published by Tightrope Books in 2017 and recently republished by Baxter House Editions in June 2026. Her second novel, The Elevator, was published by Palimpsest Press in 2024 and her short story, Pies for Lunch, was shortlisted for best short fiction by The Caribbean Writer in 2021.
A former columnist and writer with Metroland Media, Priya writes the occasional op-eds for the Toronto Star and The Honest Talk online magazine. She has a B.A. in English Literature from Carleton University and a few certificates from various colleges that helped improve her professional skills along the way.
Priya is also a photographer and her images have been published in the Toronto Star, Canadian Geographic, the Audubon calendars and Ontario Birds.
She is currently working on Beyond the Elevator, a novel that continues the story of Aria and Rob from The Elevator because readers wanted more; and Water for Thirsty Dogs, a novel she’s been working on for the past ten years, once again under publisher consideration.
Priya was born in Trinidad and Tobago and has called Toronto her home since 1973. Visit her website at www.priyaramsingh.ca
Sonal Champsee’s upcoming novel, Everyone Can’t Be Wrong, was shortlisted for the 2022 UBC/HarperCollins Canada Best New Fiction prize and is forthcoming in Fall 2026 from Inanna Publications.
The book was inspired by stories of Western tourists having spiritual experiences in India, such as Eat, Pray, Love, since Sonal says she has never once had a spiritual experience visiting her uncle’s flat in suburban Mumbai.
Sonal Champsee’s short fiction and essays have been published by magazines such as The New Quarterly, Ricepaper, and Today’s Parent. A lifelong Torontonian, Sonal holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and runs the Dear Abby-style writing advice newsletter, Writer Therapy.
“O Mary, it takes a fairy to make something pretty.”
KIRBY is the author of She, Poetry is Queer, This Is Where I Get Off, a featured columnist at Send My Love to Anyone and publisher at knife | fork | book. Their latest book of poetry, Fairy, arrives in Fall 2026 from Palimpsest Press.
Kirby will be reading from their upcoming publication, Fairy, by Palimpsest Press. In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames lit in their instant classic, Poetry is Queer. Their essays are an act of liberation they call “tending to each other’s freedom,” and are written with signature Kirby directness and panache, from early AIDS-activist monologues, to launching a counter city-wide “safe-sex” campaign that includes the public depiction of an affectionate gay couple, to leaving the States in a love that made them “the most beautiful boy in the world,” to becoming a Canadian queer poetry icon.
Like countless fairies before them, Kirby scouts desire paths beyond mere survival for new queer voices to continue to amaze, flourish, and thrive. Or as Fairy says, “This way >>>”
Visit their website at kirbyfairy.ca
Rajinderpal S. Pal is a writer and performer based in Toronto. Pal’s first collection of poetry, Pappaji wrote poetry in a language i cannot read (TSAR, 1998), was the winner of the 1999 Writer’s Guild of Alberta (WGA) Award for Best First Book. Pal’s second collection, Pulse (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002), was short-listed for both the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the WGA Award for Best Book of Poetry.
Pal’s debut novel, However Far Away, was published by House of Anansi in August 2024 and long-listed for CBC Canada Reads 2025. At TTSR50, he will be reading from his upcoming publication At My Window with a Broken Wing by House of Anansi.
He is the sponsor of the Pal Saqi Award for Fiction given annually to the top student portfolio at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies creative writing program.
Fun fact about Rajinderpal. He once appeared in a nudie shot on the cover of a widely distributed weekly entertainment magazine.
The Golden Bracelet by Anahid Hagopian will be released posthumously in mid-September 2026 by Innana Publications and her daughter Antonia Swann will join us to read from her late mother’s work.
Anahid Hagopian’s Syrian childhood was spent in an orphanage until her mother rescued her. Allowing Anahid to marry a British soldier was her mother’s ultimate sacrifice. In England, Anahid met the love of her life, emigrated to Canada, became the beloved teacher Ann Swann, (shortening her first name and using her married last name), and penned her memoir.
Her greatest wish in life was to have her memoir published. On her deathbed, her daughter Antonia promised she would try to “do something with her book”. Though Anahid never lived to see it get published, Antonia knows how much having it published would’ve meant to her.
Stephanie Wyeld is the author of The Book of Maggie published by DarkWinter Press in March 2026, a coming-of-age story within a fundamentalist church community that asks how much progress women can claim when the systems built to control them remain in place.
Stephanie grew up across a variety of fundamentalist churches, including one where they thought the signature on the bum of Cabbage Patch Kids was the mark of the devil. She’s had a lot of therapy since, though, and is mostly normal, whatever that is.
Stephanie has an undergraduate degree in science, a master’s degree in engineering, and fifteen years of being a stay-at-home mom under her belt. She’s worked in just about every industry, but the most recent is her favourite: moonlighting in a doctor’s office weighing babies and giving vaccines. She continues to write fiction, and is currently working on another novel (or three).
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 #50, please contact Priya Ramsingh or 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 