Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Lit Live Returns on Sunday 6th of February 2011

The Lit Live Reading Series hopes that all its supporters, readers, and fans have a happy and relaxing holiday season. Thank-you all for making our reading events a very special part of the Hamilton cultural scene. Our series returns on Sunday February 6th, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. at the Skydragon Centre, 27 King William Street.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Warming the Cockles of Our Christmas Hearts!

For December 5th, at 7:30 p.m. at the Skydragon Centre, the Lit Live elves have packaged up six terrific writers for your seasonal edification. Presents?! Oh yes!

Matthew Tierney reads from The Hayflick Limit, published by Coach House Books.

Garry Gottfriedson takes us inside Skin Like Mine, from Ronsdale Press.

James Deahl will be Opening the Stone Heart, his latest poetry collection from Aeolus House.

Bren Simmers dives into her first poetry collection, Night Gears from Wolsak and Wynn.

Eva Tihanyi revists Lit Live with poems In the Key of Red, from Inanna Publications.

A.J. Somerset reads from his first novel Combat Camera, published this year by Biblioasis.


Matthew Tierney

Matthew Tierney is the author of two books of poetry, Full Speed through the Morning Dark (Wolsak and Wynn) and The Hayflick Limit (Coach House). The latter collection was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry in 2010. In 2005, he won first and second place in This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and in 2006 was a recipient of a K. M. Hunter Award. Tierney "writes poems like a mad boy scientist," (Eye Weekly) and weaves "whiz-bang with philosophical insights that will break your heart" (American Literary Review). The Hayflick Limit gives voice to a range of characters who scrape out meaning in a carnivalesque universe.

Garry Gottfriedson

A member of the Secwepemc First Nation, Garry Gottfriedson was born, raised and lives in Kamloops, BC. He is a self-employed rancher with a Masters degree in Education from Simon Fraser University. His published works include In Honor of Our Grandmothers: Imprints of Cultural Survival (Theytus Books, 1994), 100 Years of Contact (Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, 1990), Glass Tepee (Thistledown Press, 2002), nominated for First People’s Publishing Award 2004, and Painted Pony (Partners in Publishing, 2005), his first children’s story. He has read from his work across North America, Europe and in Taiwan. Through Ronsdale Press he has two collections of poetry, Whiskey Bullets and Skin Like Mine.

James Deahl

Born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, James Deahl grew up in the city and in and around the Laurel Highlands region of the Appalachian Mountains. He moved to Canada in 1970 and holds dual American/Canadian citizenship. He is a founding member of the Canadian Poetry Association. A cycle of his poems was the focus of a one-hour television special, Under the Watchful Eye (1993), the audio tape of which was later released by Broken Jaw Press. He has published (or translated) 19 books of poetry including Love Where Our Nights Are Long and If Ever Two Were One (Aeolus House 2008). Deahl has taught creative writing and Canadian literature at Norwell District Secondary School, Seneca College, and Ryerson University. He is currently the publisher of Unfinished Monument Press and lives in Hamilton.

Bren Simmers

Bren Simmers lives in Vancouver, where she works as a park interpreter. Winner of the Arc Poem of the Year Award and finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, her work has been published in journals across Canada. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her first full book of poetry is Night Gears. Click here to learn more about Night Gears from its publisher, Wolsak and Wynn.

Eva Tihanyi

Eva Tihanyi was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1956 and came to Canada at the age of six. She grew up in Windsor, spent the 1980s in Toronto, and has called the Niagara Region home since 1989. Tihanyi teaches English and Communications at Niagara College and has published seven books, the most recent of which is In the Key of Red (Inanna, 2010). She is a member of the Writers' Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets.

A.J. Somerset

A. J. Somerset has been a soldier, a technical writer, a programmer, and a freelance photographer. His non-fiction has appeared in numerous outdoor magazines in Canada and the United States, and his articles have been translated into French and Japanese. He lives in London, Ontario with his wife and children. Combat Camera is his first novel and this book was winner of the 2009-10 Metcalf-Rooke Award. Click here to learn more about Combat Camera from its publisher Biblioasis.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Six New Books (with Writers) and an Anthology Launch Too!

On November 7th, Lit Live will feature six outstanding writers, newly published for your delight. Two are prize winners from the 2010 gritLIT Writing Competition whose work appears in the new anthology -- The Challenge of Three: Poetry and Fiction from the gritLIT Writing Competition. Reading from it are Betsy Struthers and Liz Harmer.

In addition, Keith Garebian, Paul Sutherland, Susan McMaster, and Ian Williams all have new books to share with us.

Betsy Struthers took first prize in the Poetry section of the gritLIT competition and as well has a new book of fiction called Relay, from Black Moss Press.

Liz Harmer was one of the winners in the Short Fiction section of the gritLIT competition.

Paul Sutherland brings his latest publication, Spires and Minarets from the UK to our Hamilton stage.

Ian Williams has a recent book of poetry. You Know Who You Are came out in the spring from Wolsak and Wynn. He also has a collection of short stories, Not Anyone's Anything, forthcoming from Freehand Books.

Susan McMaster reads from Paper Affair: Poems Selected & New (Black Moss 2010).

Keith Garebian makes his third visit to Lit Live, bringing with him poetry in the form of Children of Ararat (Frontenac House 2010).

Betsy Struthers

Betsy Struthers has written eight books of poetry and three novels. She was also co-editor and contributor to Poetry in the Classroom, a book of essays about teaching poetry. Struthers has won several awards for her work including First Prize in the Poetry section of the 2010 gritLIT Writing Competition, the 2004 Pat Lowther Award from the League of Canadian Poets, and the silver medal in the 1994 Milton Acorn Award. She has twice been short listed for the CBC Literary Award and was on the short list for the 1993 Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. Her poems and fiction have been published in many literary journals and anthologies, most recently

  • Pith and Wry: Canadian Poetry
  • In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry
  • Going Top Shelf: An Anthology of Canadian Hockey Poetry.

She has taught writing workshops to students of all ages and has read her work in venues from Goose Bay, Labrador to Victoria, BC. A resident of Peterborough since 1977, Struthers works as a freelance editor of academic texts.

Liz Harmer

Liz Harmer grew up in Hamilton and currently lives in Toronto. She has worked at libraries, orchards and at Tim Hortons; she has tutored and studied and spent most of her time wishing she was writing instead. She has an M.A. in English from McMaster and a certificate in Creative Writing from the Humber School for Writers, mentored by Joan Barfoot. Currently, she is the stay-at-home mother to two young girls and somehow manages to stay productive. She is polishing stories and sending them out for publication, working at a memoir and a novel, drafting a few non-fiction pieces, and developing a thicker skin. Her story "Dying Media" placed third in the gritlit Writing Competition. In 1998, she won Hamilton's "Power of the Pen" contest for a second time. She blogs at profswife.wordpress.com.

Keith Garebian

Keith Garebian has published over 1200 reviews, interviews, and features in over 80 newspapers, journals, and magazines. He has also published 17 books, including four poetry collections, the latest being Children of Ararat (Frontenac House). He was longlisted for the Re-Lit Award for Frida: Paint Me As A Volcano (Buschek Books) and for the LAMDA Award for Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems. He has also won the Canadian Authors Association (Niagara Branch) Poetry Award (2009), the Naji Naaman Literary Honour Prize (Lebanon, 2009), the Mississauga Arts Award (2000 and 2008), and a Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Award (2006). One of the poems from his most recent book was selected Poem of the Month by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate in 2009. His second edition of The Making of 'Cabaret' is forthcoming from Oxford University Press (New York) in 2011, and he has begun work on a new biography of William Hutt. He lives in Mississauga and can be reached at www.stageandpage.com.

Ian Williams

Ian Williams completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and is currently an Assistant Professor of American literature at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts. His first book of poetry, You Know Who You Are, was recently published by Wolsak and Wynn, and his first collection of short stories, Not Anyone's Anything, is forthcoming from Freehand Books. His writing has appeared in Arc, Contemporary Verse 2, Rattle, jubilat, The Antigonish Review, Gargoyle, Pebble Lake Review, Callaloo, Descant, and Matrix Magazine. He is a Cave Canem fellow, a recipient of a Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts poetry residency, a Palazzo Rinaldi fiction residency in Italy, and was also a scholar at the National Humanities Center Summer Institute for Literary Study. He divides his time between Ontario and Massachusetts.

Paul Sutherland

Paul Sutherland, a Canadian-British poet, emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1973. He has written seven collections of poetry and has edited seven others. He is the founding editor of Dream Catcher, a distinguished international arts journal. He has read his poetry in public over a hundred and fifty times including twice at Lit Live. He attends festivals and leads workshops in creative writing for all ages and abilities. His poems have recently appeared in Sjama Ghazal Salaam UK, an anthology of Islamic-inspired contemporary British poetry, in The Mantle Adorned (an anthology) and in the Brownsbank Anthology celebrating the life of poet Hugh MacDiarmid. His Tennyson-inspired poems (2009) were displayed in Lincolnshire as part of the events commemorating the poet's bi-centenary. In the same year a poem of his was selected for Writing Your Self, (edited by Myra Schneider and John Killick,). He has a pamphlet Spires and Minarets just out from Sunk Island Publishing, 2010 and another collection Intimacies is planned for later in the year. He won the 2008 Nassau Review (US) Poetry Prize for best poem submitted to the journal and came 2nd in the English Association Poetry Prize in 2009. http://www.scribd.com/doc/29317530/Spires-and-Minarets

Susan McMaster

Ottawa poet and editor Susan McMaster has performed across Canada and abroad, and has published some 20 books and recordings, most recently Paper Affair: Poems Selected & New (Black Moss 2010). Her midlife memoir, The Gargoyle’s Left Ear: Writing in Ottawa (Black Moss, 2007), recounts her activism in the Canadian literary world. McMaster’s work has appeared widely in broadcast and electronic media and in literary publications at home and abroad. She was a featured poet, for example, at the Italian festivals Napolipoesia (2003) and Salernopoesia (2005). Her editing projects include

  • Waging Peace: Poetry & Political Action
  • Dangerous Graces: Women’s Poetry on Stage
  • Bookware: Ottawa Valley Poets
  • Siolence: Poets on Women, Violence & Silence
  • and chapbooks such as Two Women Talking: Correspondence 1985–87, Erin Mouré and Bronwen Wallace.

She is currently Vice-President of the League of Canadian Poets.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Kerry Schooley


The Lit Live committee is saddened to announce the passing of Kerry Schooley, the founder of the reading series. Kerry's vision and design for Lit Live continues to this day in the format and schedule of the series; we uphold his interest in presenting a wide stylistic range of writers, and remain committed to presenting talent from Hamilton and the region alongside published writers from away. Kerry participated in many, many ventures to promote literary work around Southern Ontario, in addition to writing books under the names of John Swan and Slim Volumes, editing anthologies of noir fiction, and editing the work of other writers, most recently for Seraphim Editions. He will always be missed in this corner of the writing world.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

October 3rd, It'll be Three and Three at Lit Live

Three winning stories from the Arts Hamilton Creative Keyboards Contest will vie with three outstanding poets for your ears and hearts at Lit Live on Sunday, October 3rd. Join us at 7:30 p.m. at the Skydragon Centre on King William Street in Hamilton for your monthly shot of the best in literary entertainment.

Jan Conn reads from Botero's Beautiful Horses, her 2009 collection of poems from Brick Books.

Catherine Owen debuts her latest poetry in Seeing Lessons from Wolsak and Wynn (2010).

Eve Joseph has signed on for The Secret Signature of Things, her newest poetry from Brick Books (2010).

Who will win the Creative Keyboards prizes? You'll have to come to Lit Live on October 3rd to discover and celebrate with three talented writers of short fiction.

Jan Conn

Jan Conn was brought up in Asbestos, Quebec. She now lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and works as a professor of Biomedical Sciences whose research focuses on mosquitoes, their evolution and ecology. She is the author of seven books of poetry. Her latest collection is Botero’s Beautiful Horses, published by Brick Books in 2009.

Catherine Owen

Catherine Owen is a Vancouver writer. Her latest books are Frenzy (Anvil Press, 2009) and Seeing Lessons (Wolsak and Wynn, 2010). She's been nominated for a variety of honours including the BC Book Prize and the CBC award. Her work has been translated into three languages and has appeared in literary magazines in Canada, the USA, Austria, and New Zealand.

Eve Joseph

Eve Joseph was born in 1953 and grew up in North Vancouver. Her first book of poetry The Startled Heart (Oolichan Press, 2004) was nominated for a Dorothy Livesay Award. Her second book The Secret Signature of Things came out with Brick Books in 2010. Her work has been published widely in Canadian and American journals and anthologies. Eve took second place in the Great Blue Heron Contest sponsored by The Antigonish Review in 2007 and 2009. She was recently awarded the 2010 P.K. Page Founder's Award for the best poem of the year in the Malahat Review and was shortlisted for the 2009 CBC Literary Awards in the creative nonfiction category.

Winning Stories in the Arts Hamilton Creative Keyboards Contest!

Join us for readings of the First, Second and Third Place winning stories in the Arts Hamilton Creative Keyboards short story contest, a competition open to writers all over Canada. While the three writers and their stories will not be announced until October 3rd, the short list includes three writers from Hamilton: Marion Christina Kemmett, Jeff Seffinga, and Gunter Ott. Two are from Burlington: Margo Karolyi and Jody Aberdeen. Two live in Toronto: John Norris and Lucile Barker. Judith McLeod is an Oakville resident, and Sylvia Barta makes her home in Fonthill, near Welland. Two out-of-province writers are shortlisted: Chuck Lovatt of Carroll, Manitoba, and Alvin G. Enns of Abbotsford, British Columbia.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

On September 5th, Lit Live takes the Stage of the Skydragon

September will soon be here, so mark your calendar for after-school at Lit Live, on Sunday the 5th. Then, we'll all rush to the blackboard to hear six enticing writers (and their books). The show begins at 7:30 p.m.

Johanna Skibsrud reads from I Do Not Think that I Could Love a Human Being, her latest poetry collection from Gaspereau Press, released in April of 2010.

Paul Tyler presents A Short History of Forgetting, his recent poetry book from Gaspereau Press.

Lilly Barnes introduces us to Mara, her first novel, published by Variety Crossing Press.

David Laing Dawson warns us Don't Look Down, the title of his latest book from Bridgeross Communications.

Steve Pitt collects stories from the experience of writing in his new collection My Life and Other Lies: Tales from the Writer's List.

Karen Lewis reads poetry from her first collection, What I Would Not Unravel, published by Writer's Den Books.

Johanna Skibsrud

Johanna Skibsrud’s first poetry collection, Late Nights With Wild Cowboys, was published in 2008 by Gaspereau Press and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Originally from Scotsburn, Nova Scotia, she currently lives in Montreal, where she is working on her Ph.D. Her first novel, The Sentimentalists, was published by Gaspereau Press in 2009. Her latest poetry collection is I Do Not Think that I Could Love a Human Being.

Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler’s poetry book A Short History of Forgetting was published in April 2010 by Gaspereau Press. His chapbook Naming the Animals was published by Rubicon in 2009. Recently, his work has appeared in Grain, Prism International, The Fiddlehead and The Minnesota Review and is forcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2010. He won 1st place in the Being at Work Poetry Challenge, won The Byron’s Quill Award, and was a runner up for The Bliss Carman Award. Though from Vancouver Island, he works as a library reference assistant in Ottawa, and was on the editorial board of Arc Poetry Magazine from 2004-2008.

David Laing Dawson


David Laing Dawson is a psychiatrist and the author of two textbooks, five novels, and several screenplays. His novels and films address mental health issues. He feels that documentaries and academic books can provide information and explanation, but novels and narrative films give this information life, heart, and context in the real world. Don't Look Down is his latest novel. Cutting for Stone is his most recent film. Dawson lives in Hamilton and is part owner of Gallery on the Bay.

Lilly Barnes



Lilly Barnes is the author of the novel Mara. For many years, she was the senior script writer for the Mr. Dressup show on CBC television. She won a Special Gemini in 2007: the Margaret Collier Award for writing an out-standing body of work on behalf of that show. She was also a freelance Arts Journalist for CBC radio, for shows such as Ideas and The Entertainers. Her previous publications include A Hero Travels Light, a collection of linked short stories, and five books for young children. Lilly lives and writes in downtown Toronto, in an old house full of music and stories.

Steve Pitt

Steve Pitt is the author of My Life and Other Lies: Tales from the Writers’ List, a collection of short stories that originally appeared as casual e-mails on the writer list-servs of PWAC (Professional Writers Association of Canada) and TWUC (The Writers Union of Canada). Writing can be a lonely profession so our list-servs act as cyber-watercoolers where we trade favourite recipes, personal triumphs or tragedies, what our dumb pets are doing and occasionally we even talk about writing.

Karen Lee Lewis

Karen Lee Lewis is an independent Teaching Artist. She has taught creative writing for various non-profit organizations and art galleries throughout Western New York. Her Picturing Poetry Project at Native American Magnet School, with CEPA Gallery Teaching Artist Amy Luraschi, was the subject of a documentary by film maker Jon Hand, and was aired on PBS this year. Karen was a contributing editor for literature and poetry for Traffic East magazine. Karen has completed fellowships at the Banff Centre's Wired Writing Studio (mentored by Don Domanski), and the Western New York Writing Project at Canisius College. Karen's poetry, short fiction, features, interviews and photography have been widely published, most recently in Buffalo Spree and Teachers & Writers magazine. Her poem "Even if" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Slipstream Press. Her first full-length poetry collection, entitled What I Would Not Unravel came out this year.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Lit Live goes away for the summer

See you in September! To be precise, Sunday, September 5th, 2010, when our great little reading series comes back to the stage at the Skydragon Centre. Please join us then for readings by Lilly Barnes, Johanna Skibsrud, Paul Tyler, David Laing Dawson, Steve Pitt, and Karen Lewis.

Watch this space for more information about the Spetember 5th date!

Have a great summer!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

A Phenomenal Five for June 6th, 2010

Join us at the Skydragon Centre in Hamilton (27 King William Street) at 7:30 p.m. for five phenomenal poets, some with memoirs, novels and exciting new poetry collections!

Patrick Lane brings his novel Red Dog, Red Dog, along with an extraordinary body of poetry created during a forty-five year career.

Lorna Crozier presents her recent memoir Small Beneath the Sky (Greystone Books) and her poetry collection, The Blue Hour of the Day (McClelland and Stewart).

Bruce Meyer tames the Dog Days: a Comedy of Terriers, poetry from Black Moss Press.

Jacquie Buncel reads from Turning the Corner at Dusk, a new collection of poems released by Wolsak and Wynn in 2010.

Jim Smith reads from his collection of new and selected poems, entitled Back Off Assassin! published in 2009 by Mansfield Press.

Patrick Lane

Patrick Lane was born in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada, in 1939. He has no formal education beyond high school which he attended in Vernon, B.C. From 1957 to 1968 he worked at a variety of jobs, from common labourer, truck driver, boxcar loader in the northern bush, to clerk at a number of sawmills in the interior of British Columbia. He has been a salesman, office manager, and an industrial accountant. Much of his life after 1968 has been spent as an itinerant poet, wandering over three continents and many countries. He began writing with serious intent in 1960, and moved to Vancouver in early 1965 to work and to join a new generation of artists and writers who were coming of age in the early Sixties. In 1966, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne, he established Very Stone House, a partnership devoted to publishing a new post-war generation of poets. In 1968, he decided to devote his life exclusively to writing, and he went to South America where he lived for two years.

In 1978, he became Writer-in-Residence at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he began his life with the poet, Lorna Crozier. Since then, he has been a resident writer at Concordia University in Montreal, University of Alberta in Edmonton, the Saskatoon Public Library, and the University of Toronto. He taught English Literature at The University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from 1986 to 1990, and Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, British Columbia from 1991 to 2004. He is presently retired from institutional teaching, however he leads courses at the Banff Writing Workshops, the University of British Columbia, and Sage Hill in Saskatchewan.

His writing has won many prizes over the past forty-five years, including a Governor-General’s Award for Poems: New & Selected in 1979 and a Canadian Authors Association Award for his Selected Poems in 1988. He has received major awards from the Canada Council and arts boards and councils in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia. He has received National Magazine awards for both his poetry and his fiction. He is the author of more than twenty books. His most recent publications are Go Leaving Strange, a collection of poetry from 2005 that was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Prize and Red Dog, Red Dog, a novel published in 2008.

Lorna Crozier

Lorna Crozier was born in 1948 in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. She published her first poem in Grain magazine, a publication that turned her life toward writing. Her first collection Inside in the Sky came out in 1976. Since then she has written fourteen books of poetry, including Angels of Flesh Angels of Silence, Inventing the Hawk, winner of the 1992 Governor-General’s Award, Everything Arrives at the Light, What the Living Won’t Let Go, and Whetstone. Whether Lorna is writing about angels, aging, or Louis Armstrong’s trout sandwich, she continues to engage readers and writers across Canada and the world with her grace, wisdom and wit. Margaret Laurence has called her “a poet to be grateful for.”

Presently she lives on Vancouver Island, where she teaches and serves as Chair in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria. Crozier has also edited two non-fiction collections – Desire in Seven Voices and Addiction: Notes from the Belly of the Beast. With her husband and fellow poet Patrick Lane, she edited the 1994 landmark collection Breathing Fire: Canada’s New Poets; in 2004, they co-edited Breathing Fire 2, once again introducing over thirty new writers to the Canadian literary world. She has been a frequent guest on CBC radio where she once worked as a reviewer and arts show host. Wherever she reads she raises the profile and reputation of poetry. Her most recent collection is The Blue Hour of the Day, a book of selected poems published in 2007. Her most recent book is Small Beneath the Sky, a memoir published in 2009 by Greystone Books.

Bruce Meyer

Bruce Meyer is a Canadian poet and educator. He has been the Director of Writing and Literature at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, and has taught at the University of Windsor, McMaster University, Trinity College (at U. of T.), Seneca College, Humber College, and Skidmore College.

Meyer currently teaches English at Laurentian University - Barrie Campus,. His broadcasts on The Great Books for CBC's This Morning are the network's best-selling audiocassette series. He is also the Artistic Director of the annual Leacock Summer Festival of Canadian Literature.
His latest book is a poetry collection entitled Dog Days: a Comedy of Terriers, recently released by Black Moss Press.

Jacquie Buncel

Jacquie Buncel is active in Holocaust education programs across Toronto and has been studying and writing about the Jewish experience for over ten years. She is also the exceutive director of the Sunshine Centre for Seniors, a Toronto-based organization that works with isolated seniors. Jacquie Buncel's poetry has been published in journals such as Fireweed; Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal; Kaleidoscope: An International Journal of Poetry; and CV2. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in a number of anthologies including Outrage: Dykes and BIs Resist Homophobia and Countering the Myths: Lesbians write about the Men in their Lives. She has an honours BA in English Literature from Queen's University and a Masters in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She lives in Toronto with her partner and their two children. Turning the Corner at Dusk, her first collection of poems, was published in 2010 by Wolsak and Wynn.

Jim Smith

Jim Smith was born in 1951. Twenty-one years later sold his first story to the West Coast Review for $5. He was the publisher of Front Magazine from 1972-1980 and Front Press from 1980-1993. During his writing career, Smith has published thirteen poetry books & chapbooks between 1979-1998, including 100 Most Frightening Things (blewointmentpress, 1985), Convincing Americans (Proper Tales Press, 1986), Translating Sleep (Wolsak & Wynn, 1989) and Leone/Roque (Coteau Books, 1998). Smith was called to the Ontario bar in 1999.

Back Off, Assassin! New and Selected Poems appeared from Mansfield Press in November 2009. Jim Smith lives, writes, and litigates in Toronto; he visits Spain as often as possible.

Friday, April 16, 2010

The Flowers of Lit Live in May

Poetry and fiction spring back in May, as Lit Live showcases six exciting writers on Sunday, May 2nd, at 7:30 p.m. See you at the Skydragon Centre, 27 King William Street, Hamilton, Ontario.

Colin Morton brings two recent books, The Local Cluster (Pecan Grove Press, 2008) and The Hundred Cuts (Buschek Books, 2009).

Ronna Bloom reads from her latest book of poetry Permiso, published in 2009 by Pedlar Press.

Jill Battson presents Dark Star Requiem, poetry from a forthcoming collection by Folded and Gathered Press.

Ian Burgham parses The Grammar of Distance, his new poetry collection from Tightrope Books.

Ursula Pflug delivers her latest collection of short stories After the Fires (Tightrope Books, 2008).

Keith Inman opens up the poetry anthology Hanging on a Nail, on behalf of Sigillate Press in St. Catharines.

Colin Morton

Colin Morton was born in Toronto, grew up in Calgary and now lives in Ottawa, where two of his books of poetry have won the Archibald Lampman Award and one was shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award in fiction. He published two books with Seraphim Editions - Dance, Misery, 2003, and The Cabbage of Paradise: The Merzbook and other Poems, 2007. More recently he has published The Local Cluster with U.S. publisher Pecan Grove Press (2008) and, last fall, The Hundred Cuts: Sitting Bull and the Major with BuschekBooks of Ottawa. The Hundred Cuts is a meditation on enduring themes in our history. You can reach him at
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cmorton/

Ronna Bloom

Ronna Bloom is a poet and a teacher. For many years she has written poetry, and taught, performed, published, shared it in festivals, libraries, living rooms and classrooms. Ronna Bloom is also a psychotherapist with a private practice. Recently Ronna began working as a poetry coach. She has an M.Ed in Counselling Psychology and was on staff at the University of Toronto Counselling and Learning Skills Services for twelve years. Ronna Bloom lives in Toronto and currently teaches at the University of Toronto. Her first three poetry books are: Fear of the Ride, published by Carleton University Press, 1996 and shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award; Personal Effects (2000) and Public Works (2004) both of which came out with Pedlar Press. Public Works was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her latest book, her fourth, is Permiso which came out in the spring of 2009.

Jill Battson

Jill Battson is currently the Poet Laureate of Cobourg, Ontario. During the 1990s she created and ran the Toronto poetry series The Poets’ Refuge. She was the poetry editor for Insomniac Press from 1999 to 2001. Her first book, Hard Candy, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. She has written several plays and solo works, including How I learned to live with obsession as well as Ecce Homo and Hard Candy – enhanced monologues for dance and voice. She has written the libretti for two short operas produced by Tapestry New Opera Works, and she produced an electro acoustic sound art project, LinguaElastic, for the Canadian Music Centre. The work Dark Star Requiem, for which she wrote the libretto, will premiere at Toronto’s Luminato Festival in June 2010. Jill’s third book of poems, Dark Star Requiem, is forthcoming with Folded & Gathered Press.
http://jillspoetbureau.blogspot.com

Ian Burgham

Ian Burgham's third collection of poetry, The Grammar of Distance was published in the spring of 2010 by Tightrope Books. His poetic landscapes frequent the windswept coasts of Scotland; but in this collection, we also find him doing terribly Canadian things like snowshoeing, surveying, chopping wood. Born in New Zealand and raised in Canada, Burgham has lived and worked for extended periods of time in both New Zealand and Scotland. He studied literature at Queen’s University and at the University of Edinburgh. He worked as an editor for Canongate Publishing and later became the head of Macdonald Publishing in Edinburgh. His previous books are A Confession of Birds, a poetry chapbook published in the UK in 2004, and The Stone Skippers which came out in 2007 and was nominated for the 2008 Relit Award.

Ursula Pflug

Ursula Pflug is the author of After The Fires, a collection of short stories (Tightrope Books, 2008) and a novel, Green Music (published by Tesseract Books in 2002). An award-winning writer of short fiction, she has published over fifty stories in Canada, theUS and the UK. She has been nominated for the Pushcart, Aurora, Descant Novella, and MK Hunter prizes. She has had her work produced for stage and film and is also a freelance editor, book reviewer and creative writing instructor. She is on the board of the Cooked and Eaten Reading Series in Peterborough, Ontario.

Keith Inman

Keith Inman has been an editor, literary judge, student, critic, factory worker, teacher, traveler, sales clerk, short story writer and a poet. He is one of three poets in Sigillate Press's, collection Hanging on a Nail that was released in the spring of 2009. Keith's chapbook, Tactile Hunters was published by Cubicle Press in 2005. Keith is a member of the Canadian Authors Association and the League of Canadian Poets. During the summer of 2010 will attend University College in Dublin to study James Joyce’s Ulysses. Keith lives in Thorold, Ontario.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

The gritLIT Festival @ Lit Live // April 2010!

On April 11, at 7:30 p.m., Hamilton's Literary Festival gritLIT and LiT LiVe team up to bring six of Canada's leading writers to the Skydragon Centre. This is a special free event and the festival's Thank-you! to Hamilton's audiences who have supported gritLIT since its inception six years ago.

Stephen Brunt reads from Gretzky's Tears, his book on the pivotal moment in Wayne Gretzky's career. Published by Knopf Canada in 2009.

A.F. Moritz, winner of the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize, brings The Sentinel to the Lit Live stage. Published by House of Anansi in 2008.

Heather Cadsby presents poetry from Could Be, her latest collection from Brick Books (2010).

K.D. Miller takes us into her first novel, the acclaimed Brown Dwarf, published by Bibilioasis.

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer reads from Perfecting, her new novel published by Goose Lane Editions.

Sky Gilbert guides us into A Nice Place to Visit, his latest poetry collection from ECW Press (2009).

Stephen Brunt

Stephen Brunt, a columnist at the Globe and Mail, is Canada's premier sportswriter and commentator. His most recent book, the #1 national bestselling Searching for Bobby Orr, was called "not only one of the best hockey books ever, but a book that transcends hockey" by the Edmonton Journal. He is also the author of Facing Ali: The Opposition Weighs In; The Way it Looks from Here: Contemporary Canadian Writing on Sports; Mean Business: The Rise and Fall of Shawn O'Sullivan; Second to None: The Roberto Alomar Story and Diamond Dreams: 20 Years of Blue Jays Baseball. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.