Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Lit Live on November 4th at Homegrown Hamilton


Please join us at Homegrown Hamilton cafe, on the first floor of the Skydragon Centre, 27 King William Street on Sunday, November 4th for our next reading. Here are the wonderful authors who will be entertaining you that night!

Nicole Dixon will be reading from High-Water Mark, her debut short-story collection from The Porcupine's Quill.

Patrick Friesen will be reading from his most recent book, Jumping in the Asylum from Quattro Press.

David Livingstone Clink will be reading poems from his collections from Tightrope Books, Eating Fruit Out of Season and Monster, as well as some of his newer poems.

Betsy Struthers is reading from All That Desire: New and Selected Poems, her newest collection of poetry from Black Moss Press.

Todd Swift will be reading from his most recent collection, England is Mine.

Royston Tester will be reading from his new book with Tightrope Books, Fatty Goes to China.

Nicole Dixon

Nicole Dixon has lived in Toronto, Sarnia, Windsor, North Bay, and Halifax. Her work has been nominated for the Journey Prize and a CBC Literary Award and appeared in The New Quarterly, Grain, The Fiddlehead, and Canadian Notes and Queries. In 2005 she won the Writers’ Trust of Canada RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for short fiction. A teacher, librarian, and web designer, Nicole currently lives beside the Bay of Fundy in rural Nova Scotia. For more information, please visit her website.

Patrick Friesen


Patrick Friesen, formerly of Winnipeg, lives on Vancouver Island. He writes poetry, drama, songs, and text for dance and music. In 1994 Blasphemer’s Wheel (Turnstone Press) won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year award in Manitoba. A Broken Bowl was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award in 1996. He has also been short-listed twice for the Dorothy Livesay Award in the BC Book Awards. Friesen has also collaborated with Marilyn Lerner in jazz and literary festivals and on two CDs of spoken word and improv piano. His most recent book is Jumping in the Asylum (Quattro Press, 2011). Patrick is on the ReLit poetry shortlist this year.

David Livingstone Clink


David Livingstone Clink has two collections of poetry published by Tightrope Books: Eating Fruit Out of Season (2008) and Monster (2010). He edited an anthology of environmental poetry called: A Verdant Green (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2010). Fall 2012 will bring a third collection, Crouching Yak, Hidden Emu, a book of humorous poems from The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. He has poems forthcoming in Guernica's Poet to Poet Anthology, and PRISM International, and has had recent poems in Chizine, The Literary Review of Canada, The Toronto Quarterly, Existere, Tesseracts 16, and, Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing.

Betsy Struthers

Betsy Struthers has published nine books of poetry – most recently All That Desire: New and Selected Poems (Black Moss Press, 2012) – three novels, and a book of short fiction. She also co-edited and contributed to a book of essays about teaching poetry. She is a past president of the League of Canadian Poets. Winner of the 2010 GritLit Poetry Award, the 2004 Lowther Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman, and silver medalist for the 1994 Milton Acorn Award, her poems and fiction have been published in many literary journals and anthologies. Struthers lives in Peterborough, Ontario, where she works as a freelance editor.

Todd Swift


Todd Swift was born in Montreal, but grew up in St-Lambert, Quebec. Swift's poetry is translated into and published in many languages, including French, Croatian, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Arabic, and Korean. In 2003, Swift edited the chapbook series (In English, French, German and Brazilian versions) 100 Poets Against The War. Salt Publishing in Cambridge, UK, released a print version, March 5, 2003. In 2004 he was Poet-in-residence for Oxfam, and ran the Oxfam summer poetry festival, which featured Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, and Wendy Cope (and other major poets) with a grant from the Arts Council, England. He lives in Marylebone Village, London.

Royston Tester

In 2012, Royston Tester became Associate Editor for Hong Kong-based Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. He organized the launch of Cha in mainland China on August 31st, 2009, in Beijing. Prior to his appointment, he was a frequent contributor to the journal. His first collection of short fiction, Summat Else (Porcupine’s Quill) is set in England, Spain, and Canada. It explores the coming-of-age of Enoch Jones. Tester’s work has appeared in Asian, Canadian and U.S. journals and anthologies. Two stories, “Seriously” and “Face” were shortlisted for the 2006 CBC Literary Awards. Tester has been jury member for the Commonwealth Fiction Prize, and first reader for the Writers’ Union of Canada “Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers.” In Canada, he has taught ESL at McMaster University, and fiction-writing at the Humber School for Writers, Toronto. In China, he has been a frequent writer-in-residence at the Red Gate Gallery, Beijing.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Lit Live Line-Up for October 7th

The Lit Live Reading Series presents the following authors on Sunday October 7th. Hosted by Gary Barwin, the start time is 7:30 p. m. and the venue is our regular fabulous spot: Homegrown Hamilton, 27 King William Street, Hamilton, Ontario.

Sue Chenette -- The Bones of his Being (poetry, Guernica Editions)

Eva Stachniak -- The Winter Palace (fiction, Doubleday Canada)

Scott Fotheringham -- The Rest is Silence (fiction, Goose Lane)

Philip Roy -- Ghosts of the Pacific (travel writing, Ronsdale)

Julie McIsaac -- Entry Level (fiction, Insomniac Press)