Write Now: Change the Future 15 years of the Guelph Creative Writing MFA

Britta Badour, Dionne Brand, Catherine Bush, Kathleen Hepburn, Sheniz Janmohamed, Rebeccah Love, Canisia Lubrin, Tyler Pennock, Jael Richardson, Bardia Sinaee and Sheung-King

Write Now: Change the Future 15 years of the Guelph Creative Writing MFA

Britta Badour, Dionne Brand, Catherine Bush, Kathleen Hepburn, Sheniz Janmohamed, Rebeccah Love, Canisia Lubrin, Tyler Pennock, Jael Richardson, Bardia Sinaee and Sheung-King

12:00pm

Saturday, October 30, 2021

More than ever now we need writers to imagine a new future, to rebuild our world through stories. Through the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program the University of Guelph nurtures and supports many voices and wide imaginaries who recognize the power of language to summon a different world. Please join us in to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Program through a gathering of its esteemed authors and alumni whose words will empower and inspire. Featuring Britta B., Dionne Brand, Catherine Bush, Kathleen Hepburn, Sheniz Janmohamed, Rebeccah Love, Canisia Lubrin, Tyler Pennock, Jael Richardson, Bardia Sinaee, Aaron Tang/Sheung-King and Kai Thomas.

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Presentation
Reading

More than ever now we need writers to imagine a new future, to rebuild our world through stories. Through the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program the University of Guelph nurtures and supports many voices and wide imaginaries who recognize the power of language to summon a different world. Please join us in to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Program through a gathering of its esteemed authors and alumni whose words will empower and inspire. Featuring Britta B., Dionne Brand, Catherine Bush, Kathleen Hepburn, Sheniz Janmohamed, Rebeccah Love, Canisia Lubrin, Tyler Pennock, Jael Richardson, Bardia Sinaee, Aaron Tang/Sheung-King and Kai Thomas.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.

Presentation
Reading

Featured Authors

Britta Badour, better known as Britta B., is an award-winning artist, public speaker, and poet living in Toronto. She is the recipient of the Breakthrough Artist Award (Toronto Arts Foundation, 2021) and Lecturer of the Year (COCA, 2021). Britta holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph and teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College. 

Read more about Britta Badour

Dionne Brand is the award-winning author of twenty-three books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She has written twelve books of poetry, six works of fiction and five works of nonfiction including An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading (2020); What We All Long For (2005); Love Enough (2014); and Nomenclature for the Time Being (2022). She has won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Poetry, the Governor General’s Award for English-Language Poetry, the Trillium Book Award, and the Griffin Poetry Prize. Brand is the recipient of the Toronto Book Award (2006 and 2019), the Blue Metropolis Violet Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction, and the 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. In 2017, Brand was named to the Order of Canada. She was poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart from 2014 to 2021.

Read more about Dionne Brand

Catherine Bush is the author of five novels, including Blaze Island (2020), a Globe & Mail Best Book and Hamilton Reads 2021 pick, and The Rules of Engagement (2000), a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book. Her books have been shortlisted for the Trillium and City of Toronto Book Awards. Her nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, Brick, Emergence, Noema, and Best Canadian Essays. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Guelph and lives in Toronto. She can be found online at www.catherinebush.com.

Read more about Catherine Bush

Kathleen Hepburn is a writer/director based on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Her debut feature, Never Steady, Never Still, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was awarded Best Canadian Film and Best Director by the Vancouver Film Critics Circle, as well as Special Jury Prize at the Dublin International Film Festival. Hepburn is currently in development on a youth-focused crime drama series with co-creator Elizabeth Cairns and Sphere Media Plus, and her next feature project The Narrow Edge with Experimental Forest Films. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, and a BFA in Film Production from the Universities of Guelph and Simon Fraser respectively.

Read more about Kathleen Hepburn

Sheniz Janmohamed (MFA) is a poet, artist educator and land artist who has performed her work in venues across the world, including the Jaipur Literature Festival, Alliance Française de Nairobi and the Aga Khan Museum. She has two collections of poetry: Bleeding Light (Mawenzi House, 2010) and Firesmoke (Mawenzi House, 2014). Her writing has been published in a number of journals, including Quill & Quire, Arc Poetry Magazine and Canadian Literature.  She is the founder of Questions for Ancestors and the Sufi Poets Series. Learn more about her work here: www.shenizjanmohamed.com 

Read more about Sheniz Janmohamed

Rebeccah Love is a Toronto-based filmmaker, writer, visual artist and community organizer. She studied at the University of King’s College, then completed a BFA in Film Production at Ryerson University and an MFA at the University of Guelph in Creative Writing. She has produced eight short films, focusing on love, illness and neighbourhoods. These stories have played TIFF, VIFF, FNC, Kingston, the Future of Film Showcase and CBC. She is an organizer in the arts community: as editor of the Toronto Arts Report she pays close attention to developments in the worlds of theatre, fine art, filmmaking, writing, arts administration and arts journalism.

Read more about Rebeccah Love

Canisia Lubrin is the author of three books, including Code Noir (Knopf, 2023) and The Dyzgraphxst (M&S, 2020), winner of, among others, the Griffin Prize and OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean literature. Awarded a 2021 Windham-Campbell poetry prize, Lubrin is a Creative Writing professor at the University of Guelph.

Read more about Canisia Lubrin

Tyler Pennock, author of Bones (2020), is a Two-Spirit Queerdo from Faust, Alberta, and is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They were adopted from a Cree and Métis family, and reunited with them in 2006. Tyler is a graduate of Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program (2013), as well as the University of Toronto (2009). They have lived in Toronto for the past 25 years.

Read more about Tyler Pennock

Jael Richardson is the executive director of the FOLD literary festival, the books columnist on CBC Radio’s q and an outspoken advocate on issues of diversity. She is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. The memoir received a CBC Bookie Award, an Arts Acclaim Award and a My People Award. Her essay “Conception” is part of Room’s first Women of Colour edition and excerpts from her first play, my upside down black face, appear in the anthology T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers.

Read more about Jael Richardson

Bardia Sinaee is the author of  Intruder (Anansi, 2021).

Read more about Bardia Sinaee

Sheung-King, Aaron Tang’s work examines “the interior lives of the transnational Asian diaspora” (Thea Lim, The Nation). His debut novel, You are Eating an Orange. You are Naked, is a finalist for the 2021 Canada First Novel Award, longlisted for Canada Reads 2021 and named one of the best book debuts by the Globe and Mail. His writing has also appeared in PRISM International, The Puritan and the Shanghai Literary Review. He taught creative writing at the University of Guelph and is now the creative writing coach at Avenues: The World School, Shenzhen. He holds an MFA in creative writing from The University of Guelph.

Read more about Sheung-King

12:00pm

Saturday, October 30

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