The Koffler’s Books & Ideas series is thrilled to present the launch of Tenille K. Campbell’s new poetry collection, nedί nezų (Good Medicine). With a knowing smile, this book side-eyes the political existence and celebrates the lived experience of an Indigenous woman falling in love and lust with those around her—but, most importantly, with herself.  

Tenille K. Campbell was joined 2021 Canada Reads Winner, Joshua Whitehead, in a virtual conversation.  

Original broadcast date: March 10, 2021

Personalized copies of nedί nezų (Good Medicine) can be purchased at Another Story Bookshop.  

TENILLE K. CAMPBELL is a Dene/Métis author and photographer from English River First Nation in Treaty Ten, northern Saskatchewan. Her acclaimed poetry collection, #IndianLovesPoems (Signature Editions), was shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award. Campbell is the force behind sweetmoon photography, which specializes in capturing NDN joy in its many forms. She is also the co-creator and a blogger at tea&bannock, an online collective for Indigenous women photographers and artists to share their stories. Campbell completed her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia and is working on a doctoral degree in Indigenous Literature at the University of Saskatchewan.  

JOSHUA WHITEHEAD is an Oji-nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award, the Carol Shields Book of Winnipeg Award, the Governor General's Liteary Award, the Amazon First Novel Prize, winner of the Lambda Award for Gay Fiction, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, and recently became a contender on Canada Reads 2021. Whitehead also authored the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks, 2017) and is the editor of Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). Currently he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures in the University of Calgary's English department (Treaty 7) while finishing his forthcoming manuscript, Making Love with the Land (Knopf 2021). 

  Presented with the generous support of Peter Lyman and Judith Moses.   

Thanks to Arsenal Pulp Press, and to event bookseller, Another Story Bookshop. 

Books & Ideas
Our year-round Books & Ideas series spotlights provocative writers, novelists and thinkers, celebrating literary excellence and fostering critical dialogue through compelling book launches, author talks and in-depth interviews. This winter, Books & Ideas highlights the female voice, women’s histories, decolonial and anti-authoritarian movements, and experimental literature, presenting a series of virtual events on our online platform.  

Books & Ideas was launched with the generous support of Dorothy Shoichet & Family and the Estate of Joseph Koenig.

Tenille K. Campbell with Joshua Whitehead

The Koffler’s Books & Ideas series is proud to present award-winning writer Larissa Lai and her new book, Iron Goddess of Mercy. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the long poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term ‘Asian’ can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations.

Larissa Lai appeared in an online conversation with writer, performer, and cultural worker, Kai Cheng Thom (I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes at the End of the World).

Thanks to Arsenal Pulp Press, and to event bookseller, Glad Day Bookshop.

LARISSA LAI has written eight books, including Salt Fish Girl, The Tiger Flu, and Iron Goddess of Mercy, just released by Arsenal Pulp Press. Recipient of the Jim Duggins Mid-Career Novelist's Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Astraea Award, and finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award and seven more, she's been involved in cultural organizing, experimental poetry and speculative fiction communities since the late 1980s. She feels at home in both Vancouver and Calgary, and holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary where she directs The Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing.

KAI CHENG THOM is a writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. She is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press), the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2018), and the children's picture book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching and Wai-Yant Li. Her latest book is the essay collection I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes at the End of the World, an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2020. Kai Cheng won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers in 2017.

Books & Ideas
Our year-round Books & Ideas series spotlights provocative writers, novelists and thinkers, celebrating literary excellence and fostering critical dialogue through compelling book launches, author talks and in-depth interviews. This winter, Books & Ideas highlights the female voice, women’s histories, decolonial and anti-authoritarian movements, and experimental literature, presenting a series of virtual events on our online platform.

Books & Ideas was launched with the generous support of Dorothy Shoichet & Family and the Estate of Joseph Koenig.

Larissa Lai with Kai Cheng Thom

Acclaimed Antiguan-Québecoise artist Tawhida Tanya Evanson discusses her new novel Book of Wings, with spoken word artist and author, Sheniz Janmohamed. Original broadcast date: April 29, 2021.

The Koffler’s Books & Ideas series, in partnership with Diaspora Dialogues, is thrilled to present the new novel, Book of Wings, by Antiguan-Québecoise artist, Tawhida Tanya Evanson. In this sweeping, allusive novel, the celebrated poet, dervish, and oral storyteller come to terms with what it means to stand on one’s own two feet in an uncertain world. Tracing a global journey, as a relationship with a lover and travel partner disintegrates, an artist finds herself on a path toward personal discovery and spiritual fulfillment that leads her deep into the North African landscape.

Tawhida Tanya Evanson will join spoken word artist, arts educator, and poet, Sheniz Janmohamed, in a virtual conversation.

More info: https://kofflerarts.org/Events/Books-Ideas/Tawhida-Tanya-Evanson-with-Sheniz-Janmohamed

#KofflerArts #Toronto #Books&Ideas
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Tawhida Tanya Evanson with Sheniz Janmohamed

The Koffler Centre of the Arts was delighted to present three virtual panels featuring shortlisted Vine Awards authors on November 16, 17 and 18, 2021. 

Vine Awards Panel 3 features the 2021 Vine Awards shortlisted writers – Sharon Kirsch, Rachel Matlow, Myriam Steinberg, and illustrator, Christache – in conversation with juror Zelda Abramson. Themes surrounding memoir, motherhood, and lived experience will be at the forefront of this engaging conversation. 

SHARON KIRSCH is the author of What Species of Creatures (2008), her debut book of literary non-fiction inspired by vivid traditions of animal writing—the fable, children’s stories, and classifications by naturalists. A writer and an editor, she has published fiction, narrative non‐fiction, and journalism, most recently in subTerrain and Room magazines. Sharon is originally from Montreal and has lived in the US and the UK, the latter as a Commonwealth Scholar for postgraduate study in Middle English literature. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers Correspondence Program, and is currently based in Toronto. 

Sharon Kirsch, The Smallest Objective (New Star Books) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards History category.
 
RACHEL MATLOW (they/them) was a long-time producer on the arts and culture program Q on CBC Radio, where they also worked on Spark and The Sunday Edition. Their audio documentary Dead Mom Talking won a 2016 Third Coast award and a 2017 Gabriel award. Rachel has written for The Globe and Mail, National Post, and The Believer. They play chess every weekend and is forever planning their next long-distance hike.

Rachel Matlow, Dead Mom Walking (Penguin Random House Canada) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Non-Fiction category.
 
MYRIAM STEINBERG is currently a writer. In her past life, she was a visual artist, and event organizer. For 11 years, she was the brains and brawn of the In the House Festival, which brought live performances of all kinds into people’s living rooms and backyards throughout her hometown of Vancouver, Canada, and was nominated for the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for this work. Her first book, Catalogue Baby, chronicles her years spent trying to conceive a child as a single woman in her forties.
 
CHRISTACHE is a freelance illustrator based in Vancouver, Canada where he lives with his partner, Jill and their 2 cats, Wally and Morris. He also performs as an actor, improv comedian, clown and puppeteer. He works often with youth, regularly teaching kids cartoon classes as well as drama and improvisation classes. Catalogue Baby is his first graphic novel.

Myriam Steinberg, illustrations by Christache, Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility (Page Two Books)  is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Non-Fiction category.

ZELDA ABRAMSON is Professor Emerita, Sociology Department, Acadia University. As a public sociologist, she strives to combine academic research with social activism. The daughter of Holocaust survivors who settled in Montreal after the War, Zelda grew up immersed in the spoken and unspoken challenges survivors faced as they immigrated and assimilated into Canadian society. Her commitment to public sociology, and her particular interest in reconstructing overlooked stories and voices, led her to undertake this research on the lives of Jewish immigrants to Montreal after WWII. The Montreal Shtetl: Making Home After the Holocaust, co-authored with John Lynch, was shortlisted for the History prize at the 2020 Vine Awards.
 
The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature are made possible by a generous donation from the Lillian and Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation.

The 2021 Vine Awards programs are co-presented by the Miles Nadal JCC and the Centre for Contemporary Literature, Holy Blossom Temple. All 2021 Vine Awards shortlisted titles can be purchased from benmcnallybooks.com.

Vine Awards Panel 3: Memoir & Motherhood

The Koffler Centre of the Arts was delighted to present three virtual panels featuring shortlisted Vine Awards authors on November 16, 17 and 18, 2021. 

Vine Awards Panel 2 features the 2021 Vine Awards shortlisted writers – Sidura Ludwig, Nessa Rapoport, Rick Salutin and Gideon Salutin – in conversation with juror Nathan Adler. Tune in to learn how all four authors portrayed the complexities of family dynamics, storytelling, loss, and grief in their shortlisted titles.
 
SIDURA LUDWIG is the author of the widely successful novel Holding My Breath. Her short fiction has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She works as a communications specialist and creative writing teacher, and her creative nonfiction has appeared in several newspapers and on CBC Radio. She is currently working on her M.F.A. in Writing for Children and Young Adults through the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, she now lives in Thornhill, Ontario, with her husband and three children.

Sidura Ludwig's You Are Not What We Expected (House of Anansi) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Fiction category.

NESSA RAPOPORT was born in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of a novel, Preparing for Sabbath, and a collection of prose poems, A Woman's Book of Grieving. Her memoir, House on the River, was awarded a grant by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She lives in New York with her husband, artist Tobi Kahn.

Nessa Rapoport, Evening (Counterpoint Press) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Fiction category.
 
RICK SALUTIN is a playwright, novelist, and journalist who has received awards in all these areas. He wrote a weekly column for The Globe and Mail for 20 years and now provides weekly columns and videos for the Toronto Star.

GIDEON SALUTIN grew up in downtown Toronto without a religious upbringing or bar mitzvah. Instead, he learned the Bible’s major stories through talks with his dad. In 2019, he founded the Contemporary Review of Genocides and interned with the United Nations. He currently attends the London School of Economics and carries a camera everywhere.

Rick Salutin and Gideon Salutin, illustrated by Dušan Petričić, Gideon’s Bible: A Father and Son Discuss God, the Bible, and Life (ECW Press) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Non-Fiction category.

NATHAN ADLER is author of Wrist and Ghost Lake (Kegedonce Press), and co-editor of Bawaajigan ~ Stories of Power, a dream-themed anthology of Indigenous writers (Exile Editions). Nathan is first-place winner of an Aboriginal Writing Challenge, and recipient of a Hnatyshyn Reveal award for literature. He has an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC), a BFA in Integrated Media (OCAD), and BA in English Literature & Native Studies (Trent). He is two-spirit, Jewish, Anishinaabe, and a member of Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation.
 
The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature are made possible by a generous donation from the Lillian and Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation.

The 2021 Vine Awards programs are co-presented by the Miles Nadal JCC and the Centre for Contemporary Literature, Holy Blossom Temple. All 2021 Vine Awards shortlisted titles can be purchased from benmcnallybooks.com.

Vine Awards Panel 2: Storytelling, Family & Loss

The Koffler wass delighted to present three virtual panels featuring shortlisted Vine Awards authors on November 16, 17 and 18, 2021. 

Vine Awards Panel 1 features the 2021 Vine Awards shortlisted writers – Michelle Barker, Gordon Korman, and Carol Windley – in conversation with juror Naomi K. Lewis. Join us for an evening of enlightening conversation, as all three authors reflect on writing WWII fiction, stories of survival, and the coming-of-age genre.
 
MICHELLE BARKER is an author and editor who lives in Vancouver, B.C. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in literary reviews around the world. Her novel, The House of One Thousand Eyes, has won numerous awards, including the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award. Her newest novel My Long List of Impossible Things was named a Junior Library Guild gold standard selection. Michelle holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and works as a senior editor at the Darling Axe.

Barker's My Long List of Impossible Things (Annick Press) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Young Adult/Children’s Literature category. 
 
GORDON KORMAN is the #1 bestselling author of three books in The 39 Clues series as well as eight books in his Swindle series: Swindle, Zoobreak, Framed, Showoff, Hideout, Jackpot, Unleashed, and Jingle. His other books include This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! (published when he was 14); The Toilet Paper Tigers; Radio Fifth Grade; Slacker; Restart; Whatshisface; Level 13; the trilogies Island, Everest, Dive, Kidnapped, and Titanic; and the series The Hypnotists and On the Run. Gordon grew up in Thornhill, Ontario and he lives in New York with his family. 

Gordon Korman, War Stories (Scholastic Canada) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Young Adult/Children’s Literature category.
 
CAROL WINDLEY is the author of the novel Breathing Under Water and two story collections: the Scotiabank Giller Prize–finalist Home Schooling and Visible Light, which won the Bumbershoot/Weyerhaeuser Prize and was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. She lives with her husband on Vancouver Island.

Carol Windley, Midnight Train to Prague (HarperCollins Canada) is shortlisted in the 2021 Vine Awards Fiction category.

NAOMI K. LEWIS is a fiction and nonfiction writer, editor, and creative writing teacher in Calgary. She wrote the novel Cricket in a Fist (2008) and the story collection I Know Who You Remind Of (2012), and co-edited, with Rona Altrows, the anthology Shy (2013). Her journalism has been shortlisted for provincial and national magazine awards, and her 2019 memoir, Tiny Lights for Travellers, won the Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature for Nonfiction, Alberta's Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction, and the Pinsky Givon Prize for Nonfiction, a Western Canada Jewish Book Award. It was also a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Nonfiction and the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Award.  

The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature are made possible by a generous donation from the Lillian and Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation.

The 2021 Vine Awards programs are co-presented by the Miles Nadal JCC and the Centre for Contemporary Literature, Holy Blossom Temple. All 2021 Vine Awards shortlisted titles can be purchased from benmcnallybooks.com.

Vine Awards Panel 1: WWII Fiction & Stories of Survival

When a devastating fire decimates the small Albertan fracking town, Winnisk, suspicion begins to fall on teenager Maisey Goodhand, whose twin brother Sirus was seen running joyfully through the flames before being shot dead by local police chief Franki Rawlins. The Goodhand family has never quite fit in with the small community, and as a witch hunt begins to assemble, it&rsquo;s up to Maisey, her down-and-out father, and the disgraced former police chief Franki to uncover the deeper conspiracy lurking in their midst. &nbsp;

Episode 1: Kindling

Author Matti Friedman joins photojournalist Rita Leistner at the Two Penny Cafe at Artscape Youngplace to discuss their interdisciplinary and socially engaged approaches to conflict journalism. Moderated by the Koffler's producer of public and literary programs, Mary Anderson.

http://www.koffler.digital/matti-friedman-rita-leistner/

Matti Friedman & Rita Leistner

The Slow Now is a downloadable audio walk that takes place in Little Italy, and uses Project Bookmark Canada’s physical bookmark for Fugitive Pieces as its launching point. The audio will guide you through a narrative, lyrical, and imaginative experience of the neighbourhood, stemming from the seminal book by Anne Michaels. The rich history of Little Italy, the rich tapestry of the book, and a new original narration by Mark Mann will be voiced by local figures and Anne Michaels herself.

The Slow Now is presented in partnership with Project Bookmark Canada and the Koffler Centre of the Arts. It is produced by Angela Shackel of Accounts and Records.

http://www.koffler.digital/the-slow-now/

The Slow Now

The Koffler Centre of the Arts is thrilled to present writers Joshua Whitehead and Arielle Twist together in conversation.

Joshua Whitehead is a Two-Spirit, Ojibwe-nêhiyaw otâcimow from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017), shortlisted for the Inaugural Indigenous Voices Award in Poetry and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp 2018), shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award for Fiction and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is currently a doctoral student in the University of Calgary’s English Department (Treaty 7) where he focuses on Indigenous Lit and Cultures.

Arielle Twist is a writer and sex educator from George Gordon First Nation, Saskatchewan, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is a Cree, Two-Spirit, trans femme supernova writing to reclaim and harness ancestral magic and memories. Her debut collection of poetry Disintegrate/Dissociate will be released in spring 2019 from Arsenal Pulp Press.

Joshua Whitehead & Ariel Twist in Conversation

Through game and playground metaphors, Ghazaleh Avarzamani’s current exhibition at the Koffler Gallery examines the role of empirical experience, memory, psychology and socio-political influences in building both personal and collective knowledge. Considering a range of spaces, structures and devices for interactivity, self-development and play, Never Never Land questions the rules and methodologies that shape an individual’s outlook.

In conversation with Ghazaleh Avarzamani, visual artist Golboo Amani, psychotherapist Agnieszka Gozlan and playground designer Tatiana Zakharova will expand the discussion of educational methodologies, social aspirations and the function of playing in human development.

Playing Field: In Conversation

The Koffler Centre of the Arts is thrilled to present American journalist, film critic and podcast host Wesley Morris, in conversation with Canadian broadcaster and writer Amanda Parris.

Wesley Morris is critic-at-large at the The New York Times and a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine, where he writes about film, television, theatre and media, often with a focus on social justice, race, politics, and black and queer representation in American popular culture today. Morris also hosts the Times podcast Still Processing with Jenna Wortham. For three years, he was a staff writer at Grantland, where he wrote about movies, television, and the role of style in professional sports, and co-hosted the podcast Do You Like Prince Movies with Alex Pappademas. Before that, he spent 11 years as a film critic at the Boston Globe, where he won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Amanda Parris writes a weekly column for CBC Arts, hosts three CBC television series (Exhibitionists, The Filmmakers and From the Vaults), and is the radio host of Marvin’s Room on CBC Music. She also writes stories for the stage and screen. Parris is the co-founder of the award-winning alternative education organization Lost Lyrics, and worked with The Remix Project and the Manifesto Festival.

Wesley Morris & Amanda Parris in Conversation

Jenny Heijun Wills was born in Korea and adopted as an infant into a white family in small-town Canada. In her late twenties, she reconnected with her first family and returned to Seoul. In her breathtaking new memoir, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related, Wills traces her heartrending journey of reunion with her Korean mother, father, siblings, and extended family. Delving into gender, class, racial and ethnic complexities, the book describes in visceral lyrical prose the painful ripple effects that follow a child’s removal from a family and the rewards that flow from both struggle and forgiveness. Jenny will be in conversation with author Carrianne Leung.

Jenny Heijun Wills

The Koffler Centre of the Arts' Fall 2020 Books & Ideas season begins with online conversations with the writers of Penguin Teen Canada’s Pocket Change Collective, a series of small books with big ideas by today's leading youth activists and artists.

In The New Queer Conscience, Voices4 Founder and LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli offers a candid and compassionate introduction to queer responsibility. Eli calls on his Jewish faith to underline how kindness and support within the queer community can lead to a stronger global consciousness.

In Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full colour. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.

Adam Eli is a community organizer and writer in New York City. He is the founder of Voices4, a nonviolent direct-action activist group committed to advancing global queer liberation and was included in Out Magazine's 100 most influential queer people of 2018.

Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender non-conforming writer, performance artist, and public speaker who has been featured by HBO, MTV, NBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, and more. Their creative challenge to the gender binary has been celebrated around the world.

Moderator Seth Day is a transgender man primarily known for their work as the host of Rad Child Podcast. Seth has a BA in Art Education, works as a nanny and art educator, and previously worked as a museum and classroom educator. Seth originally hails from New York, but currently resides in Montreal where he lives with his wife and rabbits.

The Koffler is thrilled to present virtual conversations with all six Pocket Change Collective contributors: Adam Eli & Alok Vaid-Menon (September 29, 2020), Kimberly Drew & Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (October 6, 2020), and Amyra León & Hannah Testa (October 21, 2020).

Pocket Change Collective 1: Adam Eli & Alok Vaid-Menon in Conversation with Seth Day is presented with Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers. The bookseller for this event is Glad Day Bookshop.

Books & Ideas: Fall 2020 Series
Our year-round Books & Ideas series spotlights provocative writers, novelists and thinkers, celebrating literary excellence and fostering critical dialogue through compelling book launches, author talks and in-depth interviews. This fall, in conjunction with programming across the Koffler's multidisciplinary art streams, Books & Ideas takes up themes of youth activism, food culture and politics, and environmentalism, presenting a series of virtual events on our online platform. 

Books & Ideas was launched with the generous support of Dorothy Shoichet & Family and the Estate of Joseph Koenig. Books & Ideas Media Partner, the Toronto Star.

Images: The New Queer Conscience By Adam Eli. Illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. | Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon. Illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky.

Pocket Change Collective 1: Adam Eli and Alok Vaid-Menon with Seth Day

The Koffler Centre of the Arts' Fall 2020 Books & Ideas season begins with online conversations with the writers of Penguin Teen Canada’s Pocket Change Collective, a series of small books with big ideas by today's leading youth activists and artists.

In This is What I Know About Art, writer, curator, and activist Kimberly Drew shows us that art and protest are inextricably linked. Drawing on her personal experience through art toward activism, Drew challenges us to create space for the change that we want to see in the world.

In Imaginary Borders, Earth Guardians Youth Director and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez shows us how his music feeds his environmental activism and vice versa. Martinez visualizes a future that allows us to direct our anger, fear, and passion toward creating change.

Conversation moderated by storyteller and multidisciplinary artist​, Whitney French. 

Kimberly Drew first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director's Office of The Studio Museum in Harlem – her time there inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art. Drew's writing has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, W, Teen Vogue, and Lenny Letter. Her upcoming book, Black Futures, which she is co-editing with Jenna Wortham, is due in December 2020.

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is a nineteen-year-old Indigenous climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice on the front lines of a global youth-led environmental movement. His work has been featured on major media platforms, such as PBS, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Vogue, The Daily Show, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, CNN, HBO, VICE, and more. The author of We Rise, Xiuhtezcatl released his first album Break Free in 2018.

Whitney French is a storyteller and a multidisciplinary artist. She is the co-founder of Hush Harbour Press. She is also the editor of Black Writers Matter (University of Regina Press) and the creator of the nomadic workshop series Writing While Black. Presently she is working on her forthcoming science-fiction verse novel. Whitney lives in Toronto. 

Pocket Change Collective 2: Kimberly Drew & Xiuhtezcatl Martinez with Whitney French is presented with Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers. The bookseller for this event is Another Story Bookshop.

The Koffler is thrilled to present virtual conversations with all six Pocket Change Collective contributors: Adam Eli & Alok Vaid-Menon (September 29, 2020), Kimberly Drew & Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (October 6, 2020), and Amyra León & Hannah Testa (October 21, 2020).

Books & Ideas: Fall 2020 Series
Our year-round Books & Ideas series spotlights provocative writers, novelists and thinkers, celebrating literary excellence and fostering critical dialogue through compelling book launches, author talks and in-depth interviews. This fall, in conjunction with programming across the Koffler's multidisciplinary art streams, Books & Ideas takes up themes of youth activism, food culture and politics, and environmentalism, presenting a series of virtual events on our online platform.

Books & Ideas was launched with the generous support of Dorothy Shoichet & Family and the Estate of Joseph Koenig. Books & Ideas Media Partner, the Toronto Star.

Images: This Is What I Know About Art by Kimberly Drew. Illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. | Imaginary Borders by Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. Illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky.

Pocket Change Collective 2: Kimberly Drew & Xiuhtezcatl Martinez with Whitney French

The Koffler Centre of the Arts is delighted to present an online conversation with African-American, Jewish food writer, culinary and cultural historian and educator Michael W. Twitty. In conversation with award winning multi-platform journalist and producer, Nam Kiwanuka, Twitty will discuss food justice, how Black and Jewish people have mediated otherness and oppression through what they eat, as well as the global stories Diasporic foodways have to offer.

Michael W. Twitty is a recognized historical interpreter, independent scholar, and the founder of Afroculinaria.com, the first website/blog devoted to the preservation of historic African American foods and foodways. Twitty’s book, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South, won two James Beard Awards in 2018 for Food Writing and Best Book and his piece in Bon Appetit, "I Had Never Eaten in Ghana Before. But My Ancestors Had" was nominated for a 2019 James Beard Award and was selected to be included in The Best American Food Writing 2019. In 2020, The Cooking Gene was named on Book Authority’s List of 100 Best Food Books of All Time. Michael’s next book, Kosher Soul, is slated for publication in 2021.
 
Twitty has made numerous television appearances and has been profiled in the Washington Post and Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times, Grist, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cuisine Noir, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Jet Magazine, and Ebony.com, among other publications. He was one of 20 people selected globally as a 2016 TED Fellow.

Nam Kiwanuka is an award winning multi-platform journalist and producer. She co-hosts The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Ontario’s leading daily primetime current affairs show, and hosts The Agenda in the Summer on TVO. Nam has hosted magazine shows for the NBA and CFL and was a MuchMusic VJ and Videographer. She has worked with CNN and BET; was a columnist for the BBC’s Focus on Africa magazine and has interviewed Salman Rushdie, Britney Spears, Jack Dorsey, Magic Johnson and Margaret Atwood.

Thanks to event bookseller, A Different Booklist.
 
Books & Ideas: Fall 2020 Series
Our year-round Books & Ideas series spotlights provocative writers, novelists and thinkers, celebrating literary excellence and fostering critical dialogue through compelling book launches, author talks and in-depth interviews. This fall, in conjunction with programming across the Koffler's multidisciplinary art streams, Books & Ideas takes up themes of youth activism, food culture and politics, and environmentalism, presenting a series of virtual events on our online platform.

Books & Ideas was launched with the generous support of Dorothy Shoichet & Family and the Estate of Joseph Koenig. Books & Ideas Media Partner, the Toronto Star.

Michael W. Twitty in Conversation with Nam Kiwanuka

The Koffler Centre of the Arts is delighted to present a panel celebrating the 2020 Vine Awards shortlisted history writers – Zelda Abramson, Matti Friedman, John Lynch, and Heidi J.S. Tworek – in conversation with juror Allan Levine. Tune in for an insightful discussion on a series of counter-narratives told from both national and global historic perspectives.

The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature is a national awards program that honours both the best Canadian Jewish writers and non-Jewish Canadian authors who deal with Jewish subjects in Fiction, History, Non-Fiction, Young Adult/Children’s literature, and Poetry. Each winning author receives a prize of $10,000. The 2020 Jury – comprised of authors Judy Batalion, Allan Levine, and Shani Mootoo – reviewed 55 entries to the Fiction, History, Non-Fiction and Young Adult/Children’s categories.

The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature are made possible by a generous donation by the Lillian and Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation. Full details: https://kofflerarts.org/Events/Vine-Awards

The 2020 Vine Awards: History Panel

Celebrate the winners of the 2020 Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature in the online Awards Ceremony. Awards were announced in four categories: Fiction, History, Non-Fiction and Young Adult/Children's – each with a prize of $10,000 – with winning authors in each category attending.

The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature is a national awards program that honours both the best Canadian Jewish writers and non-Jewish Canadian authors who deal with Jewish subjects. Each winning author receives a prize of $10,000. The 2020 Jury – comprised of authors Judy Batalion, Allan Levine, and Shani Mootoo – reviewed 55 entries to the Fiction, History, Non-Fiction and Young Adult/Children’s categories. 

The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature are made possible by a generous donation by the Lillian and Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation.

https://kofflerarts.org/Events/Vine-Awards

The 2020 Vine Awards Online Ceremony

The Koffler’s Books & Ideas series is thrilled to present bestselling author, Catherine Bush, in an online conversation with award-winning, Montreal-based writer, Saleema Nawaz, reflecting on human connectivity amidst world-changing events. Both writers will speak about their timely novels, Blaze Island and Songs for the End of the World, which incorporate largely-realistic fictional narratives to reimagine the contemporary global threats of climate change and pandemic.
 
Catherine Bush’s Blaze Island is “a beautiful, far-seeing, and fiercely intelligent novel,” writes author Claudia Dey, “about the most critical question of our time: the weather systems that threaten to collapse us both from outside and from within.” The novel asks how far a parent will go to create a safe world for a child and what the children of today will need to do in order to imagine a future for themselves. Can we truly find a haven by sheltering in place? How do you imagine a tomorrow when the present seems, whichever way you look, to be hovering on the brink of catastrophe?
 
Written between 2013 and 2019, and brilliantly told by an unforgettable chorus of voices, Saleema Nawaz's Songs for the End of the World is a moving and hopeful meditation on what we owe to ourselves and to each other. It reminds us that disaster can bring out the best in people – and that coming together may be what saves us in the end. As author Sean Michaels explains, “In these dark days, Saleema Nawaz dares to write of hope. Songs for the End of the World is a loving, vivid, tenderly felt novel about men, women, and a possible apocalypse. I couldn't put it down.”
 
Catherine Bush is the author of four novels, including the Canada Reads long-listed Accusation, the Trillium Award shortlisted Claire’s Head, and the national bestseller The Rules of Engagement — a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Blaze Island is her fifth novel. Bush was recently a Fiction Meets Science Fellow at the HWK in Germany and is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto.
 
Saleema Nawaz is the author of two novels, most recently, Songs for the End of the World. Her first novel, Bone and Bread, won the Quebec Writers' Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2016 Canada Reads competition. She is also the author of the short story collection Mother Superior, and a winner of the Writers' Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Born and raised in Ottawa, she currently lives in Montreal.

Program support generously provided by Rob & Cheryl McEwen. Presented together with Ben McNally Books.

Catherine Bush & Saleema Nawaz in Conversation

Our Winter 2021 Books & Ideas season begins with the launch of On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt, by Dr. Ann Heberlein, translation by Alice Menzies. In an utterly unique approach to biography, On Love and Tyranny traces the life and work of the iconic German Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt, whose political philosophy and understandings of evil, totalitarianism, love, and exile prove essential amid the rise of the refugee crisis and authoritarian regimes around the world.  American author and cartoonist, Ken Krimstein (The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt - A Tyranny of Truth), will host the online conversation.

On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt can be purchased at Ben McNally Books.  

DR. ANN HEBERLEIN is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including A Little Book on Evil, A Good Life, and the autobiographical I Don’t Want to Die, I Just Don’t Want to Live, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, been translated into multiple languages, and been dramatized and mounted on several stages. In 2018, Heberlein debuted as a fiction writer with the novel Everything Is Going to Be All Right. Heberlein has researched and taught at the Department of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University and at the Faculty of Theology, Lund University.  

ALICE MENZIES holds a master of arts in Translation Theory and Practice from University College London, specializing in the Scandinavian languages. She has translated books by Fredrik Bachman and Katarina Bivald, among others. She lives in London.  

KEN KRIMSTEIN draws cartoons for The New Yorker and writes and draws graphic novels. His The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt - A Tyranny of Truth was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards’ Biography Category, and his next book, the graphic narrative When I Grow Up - The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers is coming out this September. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.   Presented with the generous support of Rob and Cheryl McEwen. 

Original program date: Wednesday, February 17, 2021.

  Thanks to House of Anansi Press, and to event bookseller, Ben McNally Books. 

Books & Ideas
Koffler Centre of the Arts' year-round Books & Ideas series spotlights provocative writers, novelists and thinkers, celebrating literary excellence and fostering critical dialogue through compelling book launches, author talks and in-depth interviews. 

This winter, Books & Ideas highlights the female voice, women’s histories, decolonial and anti-authoritarian movements, and experimental literature, presenting a series of virtual events on our online platform.  

Books & Ideas was launched with the generous support of Dorothy Shoichet & Family and the Estate of Joseph Koenig.

Dr. Ann Heberlein with Ken Krimstein

The Koffler Centre of the Arts is a cultural platform that engages audiences of all ages and backgrounds in a vibrant dialogue exploring critical ideas and concerns of our time.
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Koffler.Digital is a program of the Koffler Centre of the Arts, and a virtual space where conversation and dialogue between artists, activists and creatives is encouraged and documented.

http://kofflerarts.org/

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