Jump into June at Lit Live

On June 5th, Lit Live helps you into the summer reading season with six outstanding poets with as much diversity between them as can be imagined. Please put Sunday, June 5th, @ 7:30 p.m. at the Skydragon Centre, 27 King William Street, Hamilton, on your calendar, and then get your hungry mind down there for a great evening.

Garry Gottfriedson, Domenico Capilongo, Susan McCaslin, Jacob McArthur Mooney, Penn Kemp, and Anne Simpson will concentrate the octane of poetry for you in one unforgettable night!

Garry Gottfriedson

Garry Gottfriedson, a member of the Secwepemc First Nation, lives in Kamloops, BC. He is a self-employed rancher with a Masters degree in Education from Simon Fraser University. His published works include Glass Tepee (Thistledown Press, 2002), which was nominated for a First People's Publishing Award 2004, and Painted Pony (Partners in Publishing, 2005) which was his first children’s story. In 2006 he published a collection of cowboy and Indian heritage poems entitled Whiskey Bullets (Ronsdale Press). His latest book is Skin Like Mine, which was shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry in 2011. In Skin Like Mine Garry Gottfriedson offers a suite of poems that peel away the skin of contemporary first nations society to reveal an inside view of individual experience.

Susan McCaslin

Susan McCaslin is a prize-winning poet who has published fourteen volumes of poetry. Her most recent is Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press, 2011), a contemporary reworking of the Demeter and Persephone myth. Susan has edited two poetry anthologies and is on the editorial board of Event magazine. She is currently a full-time writer living in Fort Langley, British Columbia completing a book of essays called Spirit Talks. She has facilitated workshops on the mystics and is at work on a book on the contemporary relevance of mysticism. You can reach Susan at www.susanmccaslin.ca

Anne Simpson

Simpson received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Queen’s University, and a diploma in Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Subsequently, she worked as a CUSO volunteer English teacher for two years in Nigeria. She was the co-winner of the 1997 Journey Prize, awarded for her short story "Dreaming Snow." Her second collection of poetry, Loop (2003), was the winner of the 2004 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. Her second novel, Falling (2008),a Canadian bestseller, was the winner of the Dartmouth Fiction Award. It was long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has also written a book of essays on poetics, The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness (2009). During 2009-2010, Simpson was Writer-In-Residence at the Saskatoon Public Library.

Penn Kemp

Poet/performer Penn Kemp is the first Poet Laureate of London, Ontario. She has published twenty-five books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs of sound opera produced as well as several award-winning video-poems. Some of these can be sampled at ww.mytown.ca/pennkemp. Kemp was the Canada Council Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario for 2009-10. Her project there was a DVD, Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action (Pendas Productions, 2010). Five of her sound operas have been performed at London's Aeolian Hall Summer Soirees, at the University of Western Ontario, and at festivals in Glastonbury, India, and Brazil. She hosts the literary program Gathering Voices on CHRW radio.

Domenico Capilongo

Domenico Capilongo was born in Toronto, grew up in Vancouver and Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and then returned to Toronto where he completed his education. He is a karate instructor as well as a former Ontario Karate Champion and National Black Belt Medalist. He has lived in Japan and traveled throughout Asia. He teaches high school creative writing and alternative education. In 2004, he won an honourable mention in The Toronto Star Poetry Contest and his work has been nominated for the Journey Prize. His first collection of poetry, I thought elvis was italian, came out with Wolsak and Wynn in 2008. His second poetry collection, entitled hold the note was released in the Fall of 2010. It is a wide-ranging collection unified by a jazzy, syncopated writing style—it is dynamic, sometimes experimental, often playful, yet always passionately engaged, sensual and visceral.

Jacob McArthur Mooney

Award-winning author Jacob McArthur Mooney’s debut book of poetry was the much acclaimed The New Layman's Almanac. A respected poetry commentator and critic, he writes the popular Vox Populism blog, and was a panelist for the National Post’s Canada Also Reads competition. A Nova Scotian now living in Toronto, he is a recent graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing programme at the University of Guelph-Humber. Mooney's latest book is Folk, a poetry collection that inquires into the human need for frames, edges, borders, and probes contemporary challenges to identity.