Hey, everybody! Join us for Word Up’s next event @ Unity Market Cafe & Studios. We’ll start at the usual 7 pm and feature one or two guest authors, followed by the ever-popular and always inspiring open mic.
Word Up Thursday February 14, 2019
Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 63 books of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, literary journalism, anthologies, reference books, memoirs, portrait photographs, and textbooks. He was the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie from 2010 to 2014. He recently won The Woolf Poetry Prize in Zurich, Switzerland, and was shortlisted for both the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prize (which he won twice — 2015, 2016) and the Carter V. Cooper Prize. He has had three national bestsellers: The Golden Thread (2000), We Wasn’t Pals: Cnaadian Poetry and Prose of the First World War (2000) and Portraits of Canadian Writers (2016). 
He lives in Barrie where he teaches Creative Writing, Composition and Canadian Literature at Georgian College and at Victoria College in the University of Toronto where he teaches Poetry, Non-fiction, and Comparative Literature in the Vic One Program. His most recent books are The First Taste: New and Selected Poems (2018), a selection of forty years of his poetry, and A Feast of Brief Hopes (2018), a collection of short stories. Over the next eighteen months McLuhan’s Canary (poetry), Down in the Ground (flash fiction), and a Bruce Meyer: Canadian Writer (a study of his works) will appear from Guernica Editions.
Keith Garebian holds a Doctorate in Canadian and Commonwealth Literature from Queen’s University. He is the author of seven poetry collections, with an eighth due to be published next September by Frontenac as part of its Quartet 2019. He was shortlisted for the 2014 Freefall Poetry Award, the 2015 GritLit Poetry Award, and the 2015 Gwendolyn MacEwen-Exile Poetry Award for the Best Single Poem from a suite. In 2013, he was a judge for the Gerald Lampert Poetry Award. One of his poems from his collection Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems has been set to music for choir and instruments by American composer Gregory Spears, and Keith intends to be at the New York premiere in May 2019.
Word Up Thursday March 14, 2019
John Miller’s third novel, Wild and Beautiful is the Night, (Cormorant: October 2018) is the story of an unusual friendship between two women struggling to find their way in Toronto’s sex trade. The Featherbed (Dundurn, 2002) received stellar reviews and earned a devoted readership upon its release and A Sharp Intake of Breath (Dundurn, 2007) won the Beatrice and Martin Fischer Award in Fiction for 2008.
John grew up in Toronto and holds a B.A. from McGill University and an M.A. in International Development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. In addition to writing, he is an organizational development consultant with non-profits.
Word Up Thursday April 11, 2019
Johanne Levesque was born and raised in Quebec City. She did extensive research in archives to bring you life during the Great Depression in Toronto in Trouble and Strife.
She is, at the moment, writing the sequel to Trouble and Strife titled In The Pink where she reveals the Second World War from the point of view of a family living in Toronto.
Her novels are based on true events from a Torontonian perspective.
Wendy Ranby is a teacher with over 25 years of experience teaching “literally every grade”. She currently teaches grade 8 and is inspired every day by the life force of adolescents. She recently received her Masters of Education degree in Counselling Psychology from the University of Toronto and has also taken Creative Writing courses from U of T. Wendy enjoys travelling, rooting for the Blue Jays, working out with her golden retriever, and family time with her husband and three grown children. Under the Floorboard is her debut novel, but she has kept a journal since she was a young child. She was born and raised in Rothesay, New Brunswick and now lives in Tottenham, Ontario.
Under the Floorboard – 15-year-old Aileen never feels good enough to please her mother. When she pries up the floorboard at her aunt’s house, she sheds a light on the dark secret she worked so hard to forget. Why does no one ever talk about her baby sister Claire and what happened to her?
When her mother announces she’s pregnant and starts acting strange. After the baby is born, her mother descends into a depression, and Aileen has to cope with the effect this has on both her and her family. Life isn’t easy when your parent has a mental health issue. Especially when no one talks to you about it. Honesty is tough. Does her mother have secrets of her own and is Aileen ready for the truth? Miscommunications abound, but underneath there is love—even if it is hard to feel it sometimes.
