June 1 Readings: Erin Moure/Chus Pato, Aisha Sasha John, Rona Shaffran, Christian McPherson, Christine Miscione, & Joanna Lawson

Moon, June, spoon, great readings this month, like that's not true for EVERY month, but really, fantastic and varied readers are featured in this month's LitLive. This is the last reading of the season. Will there be a cliff hanger? Will there? Will…?

Aisha Sasha John is a dance improviser and author of THOU (BookThug 2014) and The Shining Material (BookThug 2011). She lives in Toronto. 

Christian McPherson was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1970.  He is the author of six books, Cube Squared (Nightwood 2013), My Life in Pictures, The Sun Has Forgotten Where I Live, The Cube People (shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Awards), Poems that swim from my brain like rats leaving a sinking ship, and Six Ways to Sunday (shortlisted for the 2008 ReLit Awards).  He has a degree in philosophy from Carleton University and a computer programming diploma from Algonquin College.  He is married to the beautiful Marty Carr.  They have two kids, Molly and Henry.  They all live together in Ottawa. http://christianmcpherson.blogspot.ca/

Montreal poet Erín Moure (Calgary, 1955—) has published 16 books of poetry in English and Galician/English, a book of essays, and has translated 13 volumes of poetry into English from French, Spanish, Galician and Portuguese, by poets such as Nicole Brossard, Andrés Ajens, Louise Dupré, Rosalía de Castro, Chus Pato and Fernando Pessoa. Her work has received the Governor General's Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, A.M. Klein Prize, and has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Prize. Her latest work is Insecession, an autobiography and poetics that echoes Chus Pato’s biopoetics Secession; the two books were just published in a dual volume by BookThug.

Galician poet Chus Pato’s (Ourense, 1955—) sixth book, m-Talá, broke the poetic mould in Galicia in 2000. Hordes of Writing, the third text in her pentalogy Decrúa or Tillage, received the 2008 Spanish Critics’ Prize, and the Losada Diéguez Prize in 2009. She was also lauded as 2013 Author of the Year by the Galician Booksellers' Association. Pato continues to refashion the way we think of the poetic text, of words, bodies, political and literary space, and of the construction of ourselves as individual, community, nation, world. Her works have made her one of the most revered and iconoclastic figures in Galician and European literature. Secession is her fourth book to be translated into English (all by Erín Moure) and her first published in Canada.

Joanna Lawson is a retired educator. She has been writing almost since she was born. She became a poet when she dealt with the grief of losing her husband in 1987.  With the help of her uncle, Vincent Francis, and the ongoing assistance of the Tower Poetry Society members, and members of the writing group to which she belongs, she continues to hone her writing skills.She currently resides in Ancaster. She loves theatre and travel. She plays the Great Bass Recorder at the Ancaster Senior Centre. Friends, and family, old and new, near and far, are important to her.

An Ottawa poet, Rona Shaffran is a board member of the Tree Reading Series and co-directs the pop-up poetry series RailRoad. Shaffran’s debut poetry collection Ignite (Signature Editions, 2013) received glowing reviews. It tells a book-length story about marital alienation and renewal and the remarkable things that can happen in a broken relationship. A graduate of Humber’s School for Writers and the Banff Centre Writing Studio, Rona has read at literary festivals and poetry venues across Canada. Her poems have been published in Canadian literary journals and chapbooks. She has received an Honourable Mention for the John Newlove Poetry Award. Rona Shaffran’s website with more information on Ignite and all the reviews to date www.ronashaffran.ca

Christine Miscione’s work has appeared in various Canadian publications, such as Exile: The Literary Quarterly, This Magazine, and The Puritan. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer. In 2012, Miscione’s story, Skin Just, won first place in the Gloria Vanderbilt/Exile Editions CVC Short Fiction Contest (emerging writer category). Her debut short story collection, Auxiliary Skins, was released through Exile Editions in 2013. She is currently working on her first novel, Carafola, which will be published through Mansfield Press fall 2014.

Hamilton literary stalwart and charming MC-guy,  Chris Pannell, author most recently of A Nervous City, will host the reading.