Come one, come all! We've got another great reading lined up, full of poets and writers from all over Canada. Join us, as we welcome Stevie Howell, Phoebe Wang, Stan Rogal, and Karen Enns!

Author bios:

Stevie Howell’s first full-length poetry collection, called "Sharps," is forthcoming in fall 2014 from Ice House Press, an imprint of Goose Lane Editions. Her poetry was shortlisted for the 2013 Montreal International Poetry Prize and the 2012 Walrus Poetry Prize. Stevie has published widely in Canada, including this year in THIS Magazine, Arc, Event, QWERTY, The Puritan, the Best American Poetry blog, and The Walrus. In addition to writing, she studies and works in cognitive neuropsychology.

Phoebe Wang is a Canadian poet, reviewer and educator with a penchant for roving across the country. Her chapbook, Occasional Emergencies, was published with Toronto’s Odourless Press in Fall 2013. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Arc Poetry, Canadian Literature, CV2, Descant, Grain, Malahat Review, and Ricepaper Magazine. She currently serves as Reviews and Outreach Coordinator with Puritan Magazine. She has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and received grants from Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council.

Stan Rogal is the author of the novels Bafflegab and The Long Drive Home, as well as the short story collections What Passes for Love and Restless, all published by Insomniac Press. Rogal has also published six books of poetry, including Sweet Betsy from Pike and Geometry of the Odd (Wolsak & Wynn). He is the co-artistic director of Bald Ego Theatre, and his plays have been produced across Canada. He lives in Toronto.

Karen Enns published her first book of poetry after working as a classical musician for almost twenty years. That Other Beauty was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. Ordinary Hours, her second collection, was published by Brick Books in the spring of this year. Her poetry has appeared in The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, Prism International, and The New Quarterly. Originally from Niagara-on-the-Lake, she lives in Victoria.

We're going to be hosted by the wonderful folks at Mahtay Café & Lounge, with the readings taking place in their community room. Come on in from the beautiful fall weather, grab a tea, and enjoy some talented poets!

See you there!

The Grey Borders Reading Series is back for another incredible schedule of readings! We are very excited to be featuring the emerging and established talent of: Jimmy McInnes, Jess Taylor, Dave Haskins, and Natalee Caple.

Come join us for this event! The night will be filled with excitement, and to bump up the fun we will be making an open and collaborative renga!

Jimmy McInnes was born and raised on the Bruce Peninsula. His poetry has appeared in various journals, including This Magazine, ditch, The Puritan, Descant and Cough. His work has been shortlisted for the Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. He lives in Toronto, where he recently completed his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph, and is currently employed as a political backroomer.

Jess Taylor is the host and founder of The Emerging Writers Reading Series. She writes poems, stories, novels, and songs. Sometimes she draws and paints. She co-edited Echolocation Magazine and blogs for The Puritan’s Town Crier. Most recently, her work was published in Little Brother, Little Fiction, Great Lakes Review, and Emerge Literary Journal. Jess just graduated from The University of Toronto’s English in the Field of Creative Writing Master’s Program.

David Haskins is published in over thirty literary journals, anthologies, and books, and has collected his earlier poems in the book Reclamation. He has won first prizes from the CBC Literary Competition, the Canadian Authors Association, and the Ontario Poetry Society. He lives in Grimsby, Ontario.

Natalee Caple is the author of seven books of poetry and fiction and the co-author of several incarnations of a full-length play titled irobot (based on jason Christie's work of poetry) with theSwallow-a-Bicycle Theatre Collective. Her most recent novel, In Calamity's Wake was publihed to international acclaim in Canada and the US in 2013. Her collection of poetry, A More Tender Ocean, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Natalee teaches literature and creative writing at Brock University.

Don't miss out St. Kitts - this is going to be a great beginning to a huuuuuge year!

Get stoked! GBRS is celebrating our season finale with an amazing lineup of poets. We've had another great year, and we're excited to end it in style.

Come on out for an evening of poetry readings by the finest Canada has to offer. We are in rare form, featuring poets from Vancouver, Burlington, Toronto, and Ottawa. We will be featuring:

Lindsay Cahill - bio soon.

Suzannah Showler writing has appeared places, including The Walrus, Hazlitt, The Puritan, and Joyland. She was a finalist for the 2013 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada and winner of the 2012 Matrix LitPOP Award for Poetry. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto and will soon begin an MFA in Creative Writing at Ohio State University. Her first collection of poems, Failure to Thrive, was released April 2014 from ECW Press.


Andy Weaver is the author of Were the Bees (NeWest 2005), and Gangson (NeWest 2011). His poems have been published in Prism, the New American Writing, Descant, Contemporary Verse 2, dandelion, filling station, among others. Were the Bees was nominated for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for poetry. He was the co-founder and editor of QWERTY magazine, and served on the editorial board for The Fiddlehead. He is employed as an Associate Professor at York University. In 2005, and 2000, he acted as a juror for the the Alberta Foundation of the Arts. He lives in Burlington, Ontario.

Catherine Owen has been publishing and performing her poetry across Canada and other places in the world since 1993. She has appeared in literary magazines, festivals, cafés, bars, colleges, high schools and retirement homes. Along with ten books of poetry, Catherine also sees her work in anthologies, has degrees, is translated, writes essays and plays bass in her own metal band, Inhuman.

Kevin Spenst's poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, Rhubarb Magazine, Capilano Review, dANDelion, filling Station, Poetry is Dead, Moonshot Magazine, The Maynard, illiterature, The Enpipe Line, V6A and Ditch Poetry. His poetry has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and his manuscript, Ignite, has come in as a finalist for the Alfred G. Baily Prize. In 2011, he won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry for a suite of poems from Ignite. After an inspiring summer at the Sage Hill Writing Retreat in 2012, he published his first chapbook of poetry: Happy Hollow and the Surrey Suite. In the fall of 2013, a chapbook of poems, Pray Goodbye, will be published through The Alfred Gustav Press, and another chapbook, Retractable, will be coming out through the serif of nottingham. In 2014 he is going to do a 50-venue reading tour across Canada in support of small presses.

Sandra Ridley’s first full-length collection of poetry, Fallout, won the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Award for publishing, the Alfred G. Bailey prize, and was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. Her second book, Post-Apothecary, was short-listed for the 2012 ReLit and Archibald Lampman Awards. Also in 2012, Ridley won the international festival Of Authors’ Battle of the Bards and was featured in The University of Toronto’s Influency Salon. Twice a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for innovative poetry, Ridley is the author of two chapbooks, Rest Cure – and Lift, for which she was co-recipient of the bpNichol Chapbook Award.

Come out and help us celebrate another amazing year of poets and readers! Get down to the NAC and see what's up!

Please join us friends, as we will be kicking off the In the Soil festival, and celebrate National Poetry Month with an enormously talented lineup of poets.

We will be hosting:

Aaron Giovannone's first collection of poetry is The Loneliness Machine, published by Insomniac Press in 2013. His past research has focused on translating the work of Italian poet Sandro Penna. Aaron lives in St. Catharines.

Aisha Sasha John is a dance improviser and author THOU (BookThug 2014) and The Shining Material (BookThug 2011).

Louis Cabri's recent poetry books are Poetryworld (CUE) and the chapbooks Poems (Olive) and -that can't (Nomados). He teaches in the BA and MA programs in literature, creative writing, and language at the University of Windsor - which hosted the first symposium on Ron Silliman's the Alphabet last spring and will host Alan Davies as fall 2011 writer-in-residence.

Nicole Markotić is a fiction writer and poet who has published two novels and two books of poetry. Her first novel, Yellow Pages: a Catalogue of Intentions, was a prose narrative about Alexander Graham Bell. She has also published two books of poetry, Connect the Dots and Minotaurs and Other Alphabets and a chapbbok, more excess, which won the bpNichol Poetry Chapbook Award.

Susan Holbrook is a poet and fiction writer whose first book, misled, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephen J. Stephensson Award. Her chapbook Good Egg Bad Seed was published by Nomados in 2004. She teaches North American literatures and creative writing at the University of Windsor.

Get excited for an awesome event! This will be the second last event for our season!

Spring is around the corner, and Grey Borders RS is too! Join us on March 27th for imported poetries the Buffalo region. We're happy to have with us guest curating the event Kaplan Harris, who is acting as the current Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Translational Studies at Brock University.

We will be hosting readings from:

Judith Goldman is the author of Vocoder, DeathStar/Rico-chet, and l.b.; or, catenaries; a new book, Mt. (blank mount), is in the works. She currently edits poetry features for the online academic journal Postmodern Culture and joined the core faculty of the Poetics Program at SUNY, Buffalo in fall of 2012.

Noah Falck is the author of Snowmen Losing Weight (BatCat Press, 2012), and several chapbooks including Celebrity Dream Poems (Poor Claudia, 2013). He lives in Buffalo, NY, where he works as education director at Just Buffalo Literary Center and co-curates the Silo City Reading Series in an abandoned grain silo along the Buffalo River.

Amanda Montei holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and is currently a PhD student in the Poetics program at SUNY at Buffalo, where she is a Presidential Fellow. She is co-editor of the collaborative press Bon Aire Projects, and editor of the literary journal P-QUEUE. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in Everyday Genius, P-QUEUE, Gigantic, Pinwheel, Joyland, Explosion Proof Magazine, Delirious Hem, and others. She is the author of the chapbook The Failure Age (Bloof Books), and co-author, with Jon Rutzmoser, of DINNER POEMS (Bon Aire Projects). Her novel Two Memoirs is forthcoming from Jaded Ibis in 2014.

Joe Hall is the author of three books of poetry: Pigafetta Is My Wife (Black Ocean 2010), The Devotional Poems (Black Ocean 2013), and, in collaboration with Chad Hardy, The Container Store Vols I & II (SpringGun 2012). He lives with fellow poet Cheryl Quimba in Buffalo, New York.

The night promises to be a great one (I know I'm excited)! See you there St. Catharines!

Grey Borders is storming 2014 with a brand new lineup of stellar talent! Come out of the cold and warm up with some great poetry from:

"Ralph Kolewe lives in Toronto. His work has appeared online at ditch, e-ratio and the Puritan, and a presently untitled collection is forthcoming from BookThug in fall 2014. His ongoing project concerning the continuing financial crisis can be seen at hudsonpoems.net. For the past few years he’s had something to do with the online magazine of Canadian poetics, influencysalon.ca. He also takes photographs."

Marcus McCann is a poet and journalist. He is the author of Soft Where (2009, Chaudiere Books) and The Hard Return (2012, Insomniac) and a number of chapbooks, including Labradoodle, The Glass Jaw and Force Quit. A former artistic director of the Transgress! Festival and the Naughty Thoughts Book Club, he is a part-owner of Toronto's Glad Day Bookshop. He has won the John Newlove Award and the EJ Pratt Medal. marcusmccann.com/

DANI COUTURE is the author of two collections of poetry: GOOD MEAT (Pedlar Press, 2006) and SWEET (Pedlar Press, 2010). SWEET was named one of Maisy’s Best Books of 2010 by Maisonneuve Magazine and nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; SWEET won the ReLit Award for poetry. In 2011, Dani also received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize. Couture newest book, a collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

This event will take place at Mahtay Cafe, with doors opening around 7pm, and readings beginning by 7:45.

We're very excited to start our season off with such great writers, so come on by, because we haven't seen your shining faces since 2013.

Be there!

It's November, and GBRS is celebrating the last event of 2013 with a huge lineup of talented poets!

Join us as we celebrate the end of a great year. The evening of readings will feature:


Kyle Buckley lives and writes in Toronto. He studied at York and the University of Calgary, and has taught creative writing at Ryerson University. He currently works at Type Books in Toronto and is a member of the Scream Literary Festival executive. He is a past winner of the now-defunct Queen Street Quarterly poetry contest. The Laundromat Essay is his first book.

David Dowker was born in Kingston, Ontario but has lived most of his life in Toronto. He was editor of the on-line journal The Alterran Poetry Assemblage and his first book of poetry, Machine Language, was published by BookThug in 2010. Virtualis: Topologies of the Unreal, a collaboration with Christine Stewart, was published this past year, also by BookThug.

Jacqueline Valencia is an experimental poet, film & literary journalist, and film critic. She earned her Honours BA in English at the University of Toronto.She has published three chapbooks. Her poetry book “Maybe” was selected for the Arte Factum exhibit by Poetry is Dead Magazine in Vancouver in 2012. Her two projects: Getting Inside James Joyce’s Head (retyping & rewriting Joyce’s Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man), and This Is Room 101 (rewriting Orwell’s 1984 and remixing it with headline stories from The Wall Street Journal), have been featured in The State. Jacqueline was a guest speaker at the Uncreative Writing workshop by Kenneth Goldsmith at the Power Plant Toronto in June 2013. Jacqueline’s new poetry book, The Alien, will be published by Emmerson Street Press in Spring of 2014.

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician, multimedia artist, and educator. He is the author of 16 books and numerous other publications. His writing, music, visual poetry, videos and performances have been widely presented internationally. His visual poetry banner can be seen outside Central Police station in Hamilton. This spring, his new poetry collection, Moon Baboon Canoe will appear from Mansfield Press. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario in a codependant relationship. With language.

Liz Worth is an author whose first book, Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, was the first to give an in-depth account of Toronto's early punk scene. Her second book, a poetry collection called Amphetamine Heart, came out in 2011, and her first novel, PostApoc, was recently released by Now or Never Publishing. 


See you all there!

CD

October 25th: GBRS Features Julie Joosten, Jim Johnstone, Catherine Graham, and Stan Rogal

Grey Borders RS is following up September with another fantastic lineup of poetic talent! Come and join us for this great event featuring the writing of:

   Julie Joosten:

Julie Joosten is a graduate student at Cornell University. She lives in Toronto. Her poems and reviews can be read in Jacket 2, Tarpaulin Sky, the Malahat Review, and The Fiddlehead. Light Light is her first book.

   Jim Johnstone:

Jim Johnstone is the author of three books of poetry, including Sunday, the locusts (Tightrope Books, 2011) and Patternicity (Nightwood Editions, 2010). Frog Hollow Press published his latest chapbook, Epoch, in 2013. He's the former winner of a CBC Literary Award, Matrix Magazine's Lit-Pop Award and The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. Currently, he's the Poetry Editor at Palimpsest Press, and an Associate Editor at Representative Poetry Online.  

   Catherine Graham:

Catherine Graham is the author of the poetry trilogy Pupa, The Red Element and Winterkill. Recent work has appeared in Room Magazine, The Malahat Review, Descant Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, The Antigonish Review, The Rusty Toque and The Puritan. Anthologized in The White Page: Twentieth
Century Irish Women Poets, she teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and has read her work at numerous venues including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her fifth collection, Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects, was published this fall with Wolsak & Wynn. A new & selected volume of her poetry is forthcoming in the UK. www.catherinegraham.com

   Stan Rogal:

Born in Vancouver, Stan Rogal obtained a B.A. from Simon Fraser University, majoring in English and doing a double minor in Philosophy and Theatre. He moved to Toronto in 1987, where he completed an M.A. in English at York University. He ran the popular Idler Pub Reading Series for ten years, was co-creator of Bald Ego Theatre, and is now the artistic director of Bulletproof Theatre. His work has appeared in several anthologies (The Edges of Time, Seraphim Editions 1999) and numerous literary magazines, and he is the author of nine books of poetry, two novels and three short story collections.


          It's going to be an exciting night, we'll see you there!

 "Tic-tac : poétiques et portraits" on CFBU 103.7 FM 

Published on September 05 2013



A partir du lundi 9 septembre 2013, Radio Brock émettra une émission en français, "Tic-tac : poétiques et portraits" chaque lundi de 17 à 18 h.
 Une excellente occasion d'écouter du français, des entretiens avec des francophones d'ici, des comptes rendus d'art et de littérature, et, bien entendu, de la musique francophone.
Radio Brock : CFBU 103.7 FM et www.cfbu.ca

Dear everyone, starting Monday 9 September, a new radio show in French, "Tic-tac: poétiques et portraits," on will bring you - all in French - francophone music, interviews with francophones in Niagara, art and literary reviews: Radio Brock CFBU 103.7 (www.cfbu.ca) every Monday 17:00/18:00

Dear friends: some information you'll be needing for your cultural well-being! See below:



AvantGarden bpNichol Tribute Night


Facebook even link here.


This reading is going to be stacked with great talent. I'll see you there!