Hey, everybody! Join us for Word Up’s next event. We’ll be hosting online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We’ll continue to start at the usual 7 pm and feature one or two guest authors, followed by the ever-popular and always inspiring open mic.
October 8, 2020
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85776322354
Samantha M. Bailey
Samantha M. Bailey is the #1 bestselling author of Woman on the Edge. A Toronto-based novelist, journalist and freelance editor, her work has appeared in Now Magazine, The Village Post, and Oxford University Press, among other publications. She was a writer-in-residence for Kobo Writing Life at Book Expo America 2013. She is the co-founder of “BookBuzz,” a promotional and interactive author-reader event held in New York City and Toronto. Her debut psychological thriller, WOMAN ON THE EDGE, became a #1 Toronto Star and Globe and Mail bestseller. It was the December Fiction Book of the Month at Indigo Books and the Shopper’s Drug Mart January Book Lover’s Pick. Connect with her on Twitter @sbaileybooks
Amy Stuart
Amy Stuart is the #1 bestselling author of three novels, Still Mine, Still Water, and Still Here. Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and winner of the 2011 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Fiction Competition, Amy’s writing has previously appeared in newspapers and magazines across Canada. In 2012, Amy completed her MFA in Creative Writing through the University of British Columbia. She lives in Toronto with her husband and their three sons. Connect with her on her website AmyStuart.ca and on twitter @AmyFStuart.
November 12, 2020
Candas Jane Dorsey
Candas Jane Dorsey is the internationally-known and multi-award-winning author of novels Black Wine and Paradigm of Earth; upcoming mystery series The Adventures of Isabel, What’s the Matter with Mary Jane?, And The Man Who Wasn’t There (2020-2022 ECW); upcoming YA novel The Story of My Life, Ongoing, by C.J.Cobb; short story collections Machine Sex and other stories (1988), Dark Earth Dreams(1994), Vanilla and other stories (2000), and ICE and other stories (2018); four poetry books; and several anthologies edited/co-edited, including Food of My People with Ursla Pflug (imminent from Exile Editions). She is also a community activist, advocate and leader who has won two human rights awards and served on many community boards and committees for working for neighbourhoods, heritage, social planning and human rights advocacy.
Ursula Pflug
Ursula Pflug is author or editor of ten novels, novellas, edited anthologies and story collections. Her fiction has appeared in Canada, the US and the UK, in award winning genre and literary publications including Lightspeed, Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Postscripts, Leviathan, and Bamboo Ridge. Her books have been endorsed by Jeff VanderMeer, Tim Wynne-Jones, Candas Jane Dorsey, Charles DeLint, Matthew Cheney, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Heather Spears. Her short stories have been taught in universities in Canada and India, and she has collaborated extensively with filmmakers, playwrights, choreographers and installation artists. Her fiction has won small press awards abroad and been a finalist for the Aurora, ReLit and KM Hunter Awards as well as the 3 Day Novel and Descant Novella Contests at home. Pflug’s work has been funded by The Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and The Laidlaw Foundation. Her third story collection, Seeds, was released in May 2020.
December 10, 2020
Michael Mirolla
Michael Mirolla’s publications include three Bressani Prize winners: the novel Berlin (2010); the poetry collection The House on14th Avenue (2014); and the short story collection, Lessons in Relationship Dyads (2016). He is also the author of two novellas, three other novels, two other short story collections and a second poetry collection. The short story, “A Theory of Discontinuous Existence,” was selected for The Journey Prize Anthology; and “The Sand Flea” was a Pushcart Prize nominee. His latest novella, The Last News Vendor, claimed first place in the Readers View Awards. A speculative fiction collection, Paradise Islands & Other Galaxies, will appear in the fall of 2020. In the fall of 2019, Michael served a three-month writer’s residency at the Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver, during which time he finished the first draft of a novel, The Second Law of Thermodynamics. When not writing, Michael serves as editor-in-chief of Guernica Editions, a Canadian literary publishing house. Born in Italy, raised in Montreal, Michael lives in Hamilton.
Cornelia Hoogland
Cornelia Hoogland is the award winning poet of Trailer Park Elegy and Woods Wolf Girl. She was the 2019 writer-in-residence for both the Al Purdy A-Frame and the Whistler Literary Society.
Cosmic Bowling is a collaborative work of Ted Goodden’s ceramic sculptures and Cornelia Hoogland’s poems. They are responding through image and text to the 64 hexagrams contained in the ancient book of wisdom, the I Ching, or Book of Changes. Cosmic Bowling’s calm weather lands in the midst of twitter storms in which everybody wants to start a conversation. Here’s a conversation—facilitated through visual art and poetry—that’s been going on for three millennia, one that asks the perennial question: How should we live now?
Look for info on upcoming featured authors!
