HEAR HERE: TORONTO

Michelle Nolden’s resume boasts blockbuster and independent features as well as critically acclaimed television projects, all of which have earned her an international reputation. Currently she can be seen as Cardiac Surgeon “Dawn Bell” in her third season of the hit series “Saving Hope”. Upcoming feature films include Gaurev Seth’s “Prisoner X” and Copperheart’s “Xmas Horror Story. Past features include “The Time Travellers Wife”, “Red”, “Lucid” and Show Me” among others. Nolden wrote and directed the short film “Loonie” which was selected to screen at the Palm Springs, Los Angeles and Atlantic Film Festivals among others. Both lead actors were nominated for 2008 Actra Awards, as well as winning best short film for the NSI Online Film Festival. She is the Artistic Director of the Lakeshorts International Short Film Festival currently going into it’s fifth year.

Barry Callaghan, the well-known novelist, poet, and man of letters, is included in every major Canadian anthology, and his fiction and poetry have been translated into seven languages. He was a war correspondent in the Middle East and Africa in the 70s, and at the same time began the internationally celebrated quarterly and press, EXILE. For thirty-eight years, he was a professor of contemporary literature at York University in Toronto, and is now Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar at that institution. Callaghan has been awarded the Foundation For The Advancement of Canadian Letters award for fiction, the City of Toronto Award, seven National Magazine Awards, two President’s Medal Awards for Excellence (NMA), the Pushcart, White, and Lowell Thomas Awards in the U.S., and the inaugural W. O. Mitchell Award for a body of work.

Claudio Gaudio is a Toronto based writer born in Calabria.  “Texas” a novel published by Quattro Books, has been translated, in part, by Francesco Loriggio to be included in an anthology of Italian Canadian writers in Calabria, by Rubbettino Editore.  And is currently being translated into Spanish for publication in Mexico. His work has also appeared in Exile Literary Quarterly,  Rampike literary magazine and Geist.   Selected readings from the work with musical accompaniment by Canadian composer, Grant Curle are available at: http://moredeathandtexas.com/

Lillian Allen is a Creative Writing Professor at the Ontario College of Art & Design University in Toronto Canada. Allen emerged from the grassroots in the seventies to become a leading influential figure on the Canadian cultural landscape. She is an award winning and internationally renowned poet. As one of its lead originator and innovators, she has specialized in the writing and performing of dub poetry. Allen is responsible for opening up the form to insist and engrave feminist content and sensibilities. Professor Allen has published several books and recordings, and has worked in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, writing for children, experimental writing forms, and has written several plays. She has spent almost four decades writing, publishing, and performing her work in Canada, The US, Europe, and England and elsewhere.

Julie Joosten is originally from Georgia but now lives in Toronto. She holds an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers Program and a PhD from Cornell University. Her poems and reviews can be read in Jacket 2, Tarpaulin Sky, the Malahat Review and The Fiddlehead. She recently guest edited an issue of BafterC, a journal of contemporary poetry. Light Light is her first book (BookThug 2013). It was shortlisted for the 2014 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of Canadian poetry and is a finalist for the Golden Crown Literary Society Awards best book of poetry.

Richard Scarsbrook is the author of the books Cheeseburger Subversive, Featherless Bipeds, Destiny’s Telescope, The Monkeyface Chronicles and, hot off the presses, Nothing Man and The Purple Zero, a novel for Young Adults, Six Weeks, a poetry collection, and The Indifference League, an adult novel. Richard won the 2011 White Pine Award, and his books have been finalists for the CLA Book of the Year Award, the Stellar Book Prize, and the ReLit Award.  His stories and poems have been published widely, and have won many individual prizes. Richard teaches Creative Writing at George Brown College and The Humber School for Writers, and will be the Fall 2014 Writer in Residence for the Toronto Public Library. Find out more about Richard’s Literary adventures at  www.richardscarsbrook.com

Alisha Sevigny holds a degree in sociology and professional Writing from the University of Victoria, is a film school graduate, former literary agent and current social media and Communications Director for an award-winning English school. A shameless romantic, Alisha and her husband have travelled the world together. On a recent trip to Panama with their new daughter, Alisha fell in love with the country, culture, and their national emblem, the golden frog. She was inspired to write her first young adult novel, Kissing Frogs. Born and raised in Kitimat, British Columbia, Alisha has always had a strong connection to the environment and conservationist spirit. She now lives in Toronto with her family.

Angela Misri is a Toronto author who writes detective fiction inspired by her birth country, Great Britain. The first book in her YA detective series is called “Jewel of the Thames” and follows her detective Portia Adams through her first three cases as she immigrates from 1930s Toronto to the bustling streets of London. The second book in the series is due out in March 2015 and is called “Thrice Burned.” Misri has spent most of her career at the CBC in Toronto making CBC Radio extraterrestrial through podcasts, live streams and websites.

Emily Halliwell-MacDonald recently complete her Master’s in English Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and graduated with a Bachelors of Arts (High Distinction) from The University of Toronto with a focus on Victorian literature and realism. She is a winner of The Trollope Prize, awarded by the University of Kansas for her essay, “Performative Realism: Anti-Romantic Theatrics in Anthony Trollope’s Framely Parsonage,” which is to be published in The Fortnightly Review next year. She is relatively new to the literary scene of Toronto, and is excited to share her creative writing with an audience. In addition to her literary interests, she has taken part in diverse theatrical productions, performing as an aerialist and actor throughout the city of Toronto. Currently she is taking a year off school to focus on creative writing, directing, and aerial acrobatics.

Emily Halliwell-MacDonald recently complete her Master’s in English Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and graduated with a Bachelors of Arts (High Distinction) from The University of Toronto with a focus on Victorian literature and realism. She is a winner of The Trollope Prize, awarded by the University of Kansas for her essay, “Performative Realism: Anti-Romantic Theatrics in Anthony Trollope’s Framely Parsonage,” which is to be published in The Fortnightly Review next year. She is relatively new to the literary scene of Toronto, and is excited to share her creative writing with an audience. In addition to her literary interests, she has taken part in diverse theatrical productions, performing as an aerialist and actor throughout the city of Toronto. Currently she is taking a year off school to focus on creative writing, directing, and aerial acrobatics.

Violinist Lynn Kuo has appeared as recitalist, guest soloist, and chamber musician across North America and Europe. In demand as an interpreter of new music, Lynn has given numerous world premieres of acoustic and electroacoustic works written for her and various ensembles by international composers from Canada, United States, Serbia, Croatia, and Ireland. Lynn performs as Assistant Concertmaster of the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, Chef de l’ensemble Les AMIS, and has also served as guest concertmaster, adjudicator, guest artist, and lecturer at Canadian universities, festivals and universities.  Always seeking creative collaborations and outside-of-the-box musical projects, Lynn has collaborated with guitarists, painters, dancers, electronically-produced music, and now… Night Shift. http://www.lynnkuo.com/

Native to Newfoundland , Yvette Coleman is lauded for her virtuosity as a crossover artist. Currently residing in Toronto , she has been captivating her audiences with manifold styles of voice including opera, art song, jazz, folk, and musical theatre. Yvette has thrived as a working artist for the past five years at The Gros Morne Summer Music Festival and as a featured performer at the Woody Point Writers Festival. Yvette was the solo vocalist and actress for the ensemble ‘Dark by Five’ – an ensemble celebrated for “stretching the boundaries of the classical tradition and achieving a perfect marriage of music, drama, and dance within an expansive set of repertoire”. She has premiered Jason Nett’s works ‘Trolley Car’, ‘Cab Fare’ and ‘Splash’ and also premiered Welsh composer Bernard Kane’s music in London, England at the Dylan Thomas Festival with the Kane String Players.

As curator of Knotibel, Toronto-born Scott Barber aka Lumberjockey hosts Archi-Textures every 2nd Thursday at Round in Kensington Market. His events support a diverse selection of DJs, VJs, and live electronic musicians who expand the limits of sound and light through countless new forms of hardware and production software. Lumberjockey’s mixes evolve from ambient cinematics into a flurry of soulful and driving bass frequencies, then out in to a breath of fresh air only to smoothly plummet so deep it hertz. Both familiar and undefinable, he tells a tale in tune.

Dante Guthrie is a photographer born and raised in Calgary, and moved to Toronto in 2012 with his family. He has been practicing photography since 2010 but only become more seriously involved with it upon moving to Toronto. He shoots all analog, most often black and white, and does the developing and printing at home. Constantly experimenting with different cameras and film techniques, he is always trying to abstract the image in different ways. He has just recently begun to show work this year in group shows in Toronto, Somerville, Los Angeles, and Dubuque, Iowa.

Sara Mozafari was born in 1981 in Tehran, Iran. She grew up during one of the darkest decades of Iranian history, after the 1979 revolution. Not only because of the dark shadow of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, but also because of the new dictatorship’s oppression and pressure on journalists and dissidents, social and political activists, religious and ethnic minorities, and women. All these had a direct impact on her family which forced them to leave their homeland and immigrate to Canada. Her passion of art compelled her to start studying fine arts at Centennial College in 2010. Now she is studying Architectural Studies at University of Toronto. Sara’s art work is her response to Iranian cultural and political issues, and living in her new home, Canada.

Emily Moriarty is a recent graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design University’s Sculpture and Installation undergraduate program. Her practice often incorporates performance and the use of the body in minimal situations or actions. Currently her work focuses on themes of boredom, ritual as well as interactions between urban environments and their occupants. Her artworks have been featured at the Canadian Sculpture Centre as well as Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto.

Kamilla Nikolaev is an Art Director and an artist based in Toronto. Originally from Uzbekistan, she had a chance to live in other parts of the world before moving to Canada, such as Moscow, Russia and California, US, and try out different professions such as linguistics, civil law, tattoo art, and now graphic design and illustration. All these experiences give her an opportunity to explore art from various perspectives. At the moment, her three specialities are creating websites for large non-for profit organizations all over Canada as part of her full time job for A.K.A. New Media, teaching Thesis at George Brown College’s School of Design, and designing artwork for many bands and DJs (music-related projects) in Toronto. She is also a singer and songwriter in her two-person band, Bit Magic.

JP Spanbauer is a senior Art Director and Visual Artist who focuses on telling personal stories through art. His work attempts to show human nature stories through juxtaposing imagery.

Bryan Belanger is an artist working in Toronto, On. He is quickly garnering attention for his work in digital media having recently won a booth as an “Untapped artist” at the Artist Project and was voted one of ten digital artist to watch by LACDA.

Anna Sapershteyn is a dynamic high-energy comedic performer currently apprenticing as Artistic Director at Clay and Paper theatre through the Metcalfe Foundation. She is a seasoned street performer and her mixture of contemporary circus, clown and character driven story-telling has established her as an arts innovator in Toronto. Her work has blossomed under the expert tutelage of Phillipe Gaulier, Francine Cote (Adrenaline, Dr. Clown), Mike Kennard (Mump and Smoot) and Helen Donnelly (Foo, Posey’s Wig). Anna schooled in Improv at Second City and continues to hone her skills through regular stints on public and corporate stages in Toronto and abroad.  Anna is also an Registered Massage Therapist whose practice includes Thai massage and Hatha yoga which she parctices out of her home in the west end.

Gillian Foster is a graduate of the University of Guelph, Studio Arts Program where she specialized in photography. She is an active member of the arts community as a practicing artist, educator and  photographer. Recently she was one of 10 emerging artist selected to take part in the Ontario Society of Artists annual group show. She has also shown as part of CONTACT photography festival, SNAP! Toronto Photography Competition and Culture Days. Gillian has been working as an Artist Educator and Artistic Director for non-profit arts organizations in Toronto since 2008.

Blaine Speigel is a Toronto based artist working in photography, film and sound-design; his live performances as (blankfoto) include multiple projector event-based environments.  a central theme in his work is the transformation of materials, through alchemical processes, manifesting in forms of spiritual energy.

Windup Bird Cafe is the top literary and culinary restaurant in Toronto. Owner and award winning writer Sang Kim curates a variety of programs that include literary and culinary arts, social and environmental issues, as well as conducting Toronto’s most popular sushi making class: Sushi Making For The Soul. Award winning chef Yumiko Kobayashi takes the As-Much-As-Possible approach to her locally-sourced international cuisine, with a touch of Japanese. Their monthly literary programs include: COOK/BOOK, Best Canadian Poetry Reading Series, Ted Goossen & Friends, Birds of a Feather Storytelling Series, Shine & Dine, LiterEATure, Writes of Passage, Parental Guidance Not Required Reading Series, and more. Visit windupbird.ca for more info. (382 College st).