The Flowers of Lit Live in May

Poetry and fiction spring back in May, as Lit Live showcases six exciting writers on Sunday, May 2nd, at 7:30 p.m. See you at the Skydragon Centre, 27 King William Street, Hamilton, Ontario.

Colin Morton brings two recent books, The Local Cluster (Pecan Grove Press, 2008) and The Hundred Cuts (Buschek Books, 2009).

Ronna Bloom reads from her latest book of poetry Permiso, published in 2009 by Pedlar Press.

Jill Battson presents Dark Star Requiem, poetry from a forthcoming collection by Folded and Gathered Press.

Ian Burgham parses The Grammar of Distance, his new poetry collection from Tightrope Books.

Ursula Pflug delivers her latest collection of short stories After the Fires (Tightrope Books, 2008).

Keith Inman opens up the poetry anthology Hanging on a Nail, on behalf of Sigillate Press in St. Catharines.

Colin Morton

Colin Morton was born in Toronto, grew up in Calgary and now lives in Ottawa, where two of his books of poetry have won the Archibald Lampman Award and one was shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award in fiction. He published two books with Seraphim Editions - Dance, Misery, 2003, and The Cabbage of Paradise: The Merzbook and other Poems, 2007. More recently he has published The Local Cluster with U.S. publisher Pecan Grove Press (2008) and, last fall, The Hundred Cuts: Sitting Bull and the Major with BuschekBooks of Ottawa. The Hundred Cuts is a meditation on enduring themes in our history. You can reach him at
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cmorton/

Ronna Bloom

Ronna Bloom is a poet and a teacher. For many years she has written poetry, and taught, performed, published, shared it in festivals, libraries, living rooms and classrooms. Ronna Bloom is also a psychotherapist with a private practice. Recently Ronna began working as a poetry coach. She has an M.Ed in Counselling Psychology and was on staff at the University of Toronto Counselling and Learning Skills Services for twelve years. Ronna Bloom lives in Toronto and currently teaches at the University of Toronto. Her first three poetry books are: Fear of the Ride, published by Carleton University Press, 1996 and shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award; Personal Effects (2000) and Public Works (2004) both of which came out with Pedlar Press. Public Works was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her latest book, her fourth, is Permiso which came out in the spring of 2009.

Jill Battson

Jill Battson is currently the Poet Laureate of Cobourg, Ontario. During the 1990s she created and ran the Toronto poetry series The Poets’ Refuge. She was the poetry editor for Insomniac Press from 1999 to 2001. Her first book, Hard Candy, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. She has written several plays and solo works, including How I learned to live with obsession as well as Ecce Homo and Hard Candy – enhanced monologues for dance and voice. She has written the libretti for two short operas produced by Tapestry New Opera Works, and she produced an electro acoustic sound art project, LinguaElastic, for the Canadian Music Centre. The work Dark Star Requiem, for which she wrote the libretto, will premiere at Toronto’s Luminato Festival in June 2010. Jill’s third book of poems, Dark Star Requiem, is forthcoming with Folded & Gathered Press.
http://jillspoetbureau.blogspot.com

Ian Burgham

Ian Burgham's third collection of poetry, The Grammar of Distance was published in the spring of 2010 by Tightrope Books. His poetic landscapes frequent the windswept coasts of Scotland; but in this collection, we also find him doing terribly Canadian things like snowshoeing, surveying, chopping wood. Born in New Zealand and raised in Canada, Burgham has lived and worked for extended periods of time in both New Zealand and Scotland. He studied literature at Queen’s University and at the University of Edinburgh. He worked as an editor for Canongate Publishing and later became the head of Macdonald Publishing in Edinburgh. His previous books are A Confession of Birds, a poetry chapbook published in the UK in 2004, and The Stone Skippers which came out in 2007 and was nominated for the 2008 Relit Award.

Ursula Pflug

Ursula Pflug is the author of After The Fires, a collection of short stories (Tightrope Books, 2008) and a novel, Green Music (published by Tesseract Books in 2002). An award-winning writer of short fiction, she has published over fifty stories in Canada, theUS and the UK. She has been nominated for the Pushcart, Aurora, Descant Novella, and MK Hunter prizes. She has had her work produced for stage and film and is also a freelance editor, book reviewer and creative writing instructor. She is on the board of the Cooked and Eaten Reading Series in Peterborough, Ontario.

Keith Inman

Keith Inman has been an editor, literary judge, student, critic, factory worker, teacher, traveler, sales clerk, short story writer and a poet. He is one of three poets in Sigillate Press's, collection Hanging on a Nail that was released in the spring of 2009. Keith's chapbook, Tactile Hunters was published by Cubicle Press in 2005. Keith is a member of the Canadian Authors Association and the League of Canadian Poets. During the summer of 2010 will attend University College in Dublin to study James Joyce’s Ulysses. Keith lives in Thorold, Ontario.