WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2015
QUEER NIGHT!
L-R: Syrus Marcus Ware, Amber Dawn, Vivek Shraya & Trish Salah.
AT
full of beans Coffee House & Roastery
1348 Dundas St. W., Toronto
Guest speaker at 6:30pm
Michael Erickson, Glad Day Bookshop
“The Role of the LGBTQ Bookstore in the Changing World of Community and Communication”
Readings begin at 7:00
The reading is PWYC (suggested $3-$5) and features a Q&A with the writers afterward. Books and treats are available for sale. Please note that while the venue is wheelchair accessible, washroom facilities are not.
Many thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for their support.
GUEST SPEAKER
Michael Erickson is a co-owner of Glad Day Bookshop, the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore and Toronto’s oldest bookstore of any kind. A dedicated community organizer and social justice activist, he is also a high school teacher in the TDSB.
READERS
Amber Dawn is the author of the poetry collection Where The Words End And My Body Begins, novel Sub Rosa and memoir How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir. Her writing traverses themes of sex work, queer identity and survivor pride. She lives on unceded Coast Salish territory (incorporated Vancouver).
Trish Salah is the author of two poetry collections–the Lambda Award-winning Wanting in Arabic, and Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1–and co-editor of a special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, on Transgender Cultural Production. At the University of Winnipeg, she co-organized the conferences Writing Trans Genres: Emergent Literatures and Criticism, and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres. She has recently accepted a position as assistant professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University.
Vivek Shraya’s body of work includes ten albums, four short films, and three books that have been used as textbooks at several post-secondary institutions. His debut novel, She of the Mountains, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2014. A three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, Vivek was the 2014 recipient of the Steinert & Ferreiro Award for leadership in Toronto’s LGBTQ community, the recipient of Anokhi Media’s inaugural Most Promising LGBTQ Community Crusader Award in 2015, and a 2015 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award finalist.
Syrus Marcus Ware is a visual artist, activist, and educator, as well as a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, and the author of Love is in the Hair, part of Flamingo Rampant’s 2015 book series, and chapters in Who’s Your Daddy?: And Other Writings on Queer Parenting (Sumach Press), Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (Oxford) and Disability Incarcerated (Palgrave MacMillan). He is also the Program Coordinator of Youth Programs, Art Gallery of Ontario, and for the past 15 years, has hosted the weekly art and activism segment, “Resistance on the Sound Dial”, on CIUT 89.5FM. In 2005, Syrus was voted “Best Queer Activist” by NOW Magazine, and in 2012, he was awarded the Steinert & Ferreiro Award.
Brockton Writers Series 