Join Toronto Lit Up, Brick Books and A Different Booklist on Thursday, November 4, 2021 at 6:30pm ET to celebrate the launch of Assiyah Jamilla Touré’s book Autowar. The virtual event will feature Kim Ninkuru, Yemisi Adeleye, Ra’anaa Brown and host nènè myriam konaté.

Autowar is a visceral, vital, unblinking debut collection of poems exploring kinesthetic memory and longing, inherited violence, and the body as a geographical site. For some of us our first lessons are in how much pain we’re made to think we deserve–and the resulting scars are always meant to be kept secret. Assiyah Jamilla Touré’s debut collection is a record of those scars–not those inflicted on us by the thousands of little wars we live in everyday, but those that come afterwards, those we inflict upon ourselves to mark the path. You can get your copy of Autowar from A Different Booklist here.

About the special guests joining Assiyah Jamilla Touré:

NÈNÈ MYRIAM KONATÉ (b.1993, tio’tia:ke/mooniyang/montreal) is a child of ayiti and mali’s diasporas living between tio’tia:ke/mooniyang and ottawa, unceded kanien’keha:ka and algonquin anishinaabeg territories. their transdisciplinary practice is concerned with somatic knowledge(s) and storytelling. nènè is the founder of the clap back, a dialogue-based space that facilitates the emergence of transdisciplinary experiences by exploring relationships between pop culture and lived realities.

KIM NINKURU is a multimedia artist from Bujumbura, in Burundi, currently residing in Toronto. She uses performance art, installation, video, spoken word and movement to create pieces that give her the chance to explore and express rage, love, desire, beauty, or pain in relation to her own body and mind. Her work heavily questions our preconceived notions of gender, race, sexuality and class. It is grounded in the firm belief that blackness is past, present and future at any given moment.

YEMISI ADELEYE is an earrings enthusiast and a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke “Montreal”. Their main medium right now is DJing.

Originally from Brampton, Ontario, RA’ANAA BROWN received her BA and MA at Laurentian University’s McEwen School of Architecture. She is currently pursuing her PhD research on the intersection of Black art and activism (artivism) at Concordia University. Ra’anaa is the Co-Founder and President of Black Lives Matter Sudbury and Installation Coordinator for Up Here: Urban Arts Festival, where she has contributed her talents to the development of many Afrocentric artistic installations. As an artist, activist, and academic, Ra’anaa is dedicated to creating space for people of colour and continually promoting anti-racist practices and social justice.

Toronto Lit Up is a multi-year initiative, started in 2016 by the Toronto International Festival of Authors and the Toronto Arts Council, to spotlight Toronto writers and empower local artists with career-building opportunities. Between April 2016 to December 2020, Toronto Lit Up has produced 119 events to launch 143 books by 212 Toronto authors. Toronto Lit Up book launches take place throughout the year at venues across the city. They are open to the public and free to attend. Click here for more information.