John W. Macdonald is the unofficial photographer of Ottawa’s literary Scene. Although not a writer like Carl Van Vechten, he is still to Ottawa what the former was to the Harlem Renaissance in terms of visual arts. His lenses are indispensable to the archiving of Ottawa’s unfolding scribal history.
Tom Ue is a graduate student in the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London, where he researches on Shakespeare’s influence on the writing of Henry James, George Gissing, and Oscar Wilde.
Chris Tse captained the 2010 Capital Slam team that won the Canadian national championship in October 2010. The reigning Ottawa Capital Slam champion has produced a book of poetry and a CD, both entitled An Ode to My Afro, and has performed on stages from Vancouver to St. Louis. His poetry can best be described as a blend of hip-hop and story-telling, covering everything from young love to racial profiling, from child sex slavery to war, and has received play on radio stations around the world. He is also an accomplished musician and journalist. His work has appeared on the CBC, CTV, and in numerous newspapers across the country. He is currently working in Kumasi, Ghana as an intern for Journalists for Human Rights and the Canadian International Development Agency.
Lawrence Aronovitch is a playwright living in Ottawa. “Ex Cathedra” and a companion play, “Safe House,” is being produced in Ottawa by Evolution Theatre and is scheduled to premiere in May, 2011. His most recent play, “Galatea,” will be performed at the Foyle Pride Festival in Derry, Northern Ireland in August, 2011. Aronovitch is the former artistic director of Ottawa’s Toto Too Theatre and is the recipient of an Ontario Arts Council Theatre Creators’ Reserve Grant through the Great Canadian Theatre Company.
Lisa Twardowska is an actress, ‘deviser’ of theatre and dance pieces, and more lately, a writer. In the last 10 years she has lived in Toronto, London (Ont.), Ottawa, and now in Vancouver. You are most likely to find her staring at the ocean through the viewfinder of her camera.
Ankur Betageri (b.1983) is a bilingual writer and poet, writing in English and Kannada, based in New Delhi. He has two collections of poetry in Kannada (Hidida Usiru, 2004 and Idara Hesaru, 2006) and one in English (The Sea of Silence, 2000). He holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology and is presently the Assistant Editor of Indian Literature, the literary journal published by Sahitya Akademi and the Contributing Editor (India) of the Singapore-based e-zine Writersconnect.org.
Ben Hackman is a young poet living in Toronto. He is the Founding Editor of the Molotov Rag, Toronto's Anarchist Quarterly, and the voice and face of The Holy Gasp, a damn-the-Man beatnik revival conga act. His poetry has most recently appeared in Jones Avenue and the Literary Review of Canada, and is forthcoming in Canadian Literature.
Catherine Owen is a Vancouver poet. She has seven collections out amongst which are Frenzy (Anvil Press 2009), a recipient of the Alberta Literary Award and Seeing Lessons (Wolsak & Wynn 2010). A compilation of essays and memoirs, Catalysts is forthcoming in October, 2011.
Chris Colderley is currently an elementary educator in Ontario, Canada. His work has appeared in Inscribed Magazine, Möbius: The Poetry magazine, Quills Poetry Magazine, and Tower Poetry.
Wale Adebanwi is a Nigerian Africanist scholar and political scientist and Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology and Political Science at the University of California at Davis, USA. He is also a creative writer.
Percival Marcaida is a painter-poet based in Ottawa. Her sacrifice (The Queen’s Gambit) And Other Works is his first book-length publication.
Salim Gold once of Lebanon, now of Montreal, is not quit of Beirut, although Canada is a settlement. His carpet trade keeps him neither here nor there.
Johanna van Zanten was born and raised in the Netherlands. She obtained a Fine Arts degree at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and entered the social work profession as a creative therapist in a treatment centre for heroin addicts before she immigrated to Canada.
Ismé Bennie is one of the most influential women in Canadian broadcasting, and has a proven track record in both private and public television production and management. Her most recent positions were, as a Vice-President and General Manager of several CTV specialty services. She managed a large portfolio which included Bravo!, The Comedy Network, Space, BookTelevision, Drive-In Classics and TV Land Canada. In 1990, she received the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) Personal Achievement Award, and in 1995, the CFTPA Jack Chisholm Award for Lifetime Contribution to the Motion Picture and Television Industry.
Allyson Blood’s first published short story, “Saturday” appeared in Tok 5 in May 2010. She divides her time between creative writing and Early Childhood Education. She studied the Wild Mind method of writing with Natalie Goldberg in New Mexico in 1997. Allyson Blood lives in Toronto with her young son.
Tom Bauer lives and works in Montreal, Canada. Two of his short stories have placed as runners-up in the Quebec Writing Competition and the CBC Literary Competition. He has worked as a researcher for Discovery television and edited feature film scripts. He is currently finishing two novels, and one of his scripts has been optioned, a comedy about a young man who decides to get circumcised to marry the woman he loves, and then realizes he doesn't have the guts to go through with it.
Nengi Josef Ilagha, is a Nigerian poet and author of Royal Mail. He lives in London.
Cyril Dabydeen’s stories and poetry have appeared in over 60 literary magazines world-wide, including the Heinemann, Oxford and Penguin Books of Caribbean Poetry. He adjudicated for the Neustadt International Literature Prize (U of Oklahoma). He has written 20 books, including six collections of stories. His last novel, Drums of My Flesh, had been nominated for the IMPAC/Dublin Literary Prize, and won the top Guyana Prize for Fiction, 2007. He teaches Creative Writing, UOttawa, Canada.
Julie Leroux holds a B.A. degree in comparative literature from Université de Montréal and is currently pursuing an M.A. degree in English at McGill University. Her literary interests include Gothic writing, 19th century science fiction, the works of H.G. Wells and H. Lovecraft, and the impact of Darwinism on British literature.
Angela Hickman grew up in Nova Scotia, but is now living in Toronto, where she is completing her Masters of Journalism at Ryerson University. She blogs at www.booksunderskin.com
Rosel Kim is a Masters student in English at McGill University, where she studies visual representations of queer identities on contemporary television. In her spare time, she writes about the environment and health at <www.naturallysavvy.com>.
Amanda Tripp Amanda Tripp is an English professor at Heritage College, a freelance writer, and a graduate of McGill University. Her academic interests include film genre, nostalgia, gothic narrative, and American literature.
Reid McCarter is a freelance writer, editor and graduate of the University of Guelph. He has contributed to several print and online publications, including Side Street, blogTO and C&G Magazine, and played bass and guitar in the (now defunct) Guelph/Toronto indie band You Yourselves.
George Elliott Clarke is professor of English at the University of Toronto. He is arguably one of Canada’s most accomplished poets. He has several groundbreaking verse and dramatic poetry collections. He was recently inducted into the Order of Canada and has honorary doctoreates from several Canadian universities.
Veena Gokhale writes fiction and non-fiction. She worked as a journalist in Bombay, in the 1980s and came to Canada in 1990 as a Distinguished Visiting Journalist. She works in communications for non-profits and lives in Montreal. She has published fiction and poetry in anthologies – print and audio, and literary magazines, as well as articles. She has finished a manuscript, “Bombaywali and Other Stories,” and is working on a novel. www.veenago.com
Mariellen Ward is a freelance writer based in Toronto. She writes for newspapers and magazines such as the Toronto Star, Zoomer, Homemakers, Canadian Living and Dreamscapes, and for many online travel sites and blogs. Mariellen has traveled for more than a year altogether in India and publishes an India-inspired travel blog called Breathedreamgo <http://breathedreamgo.com/>. She recently published her first book, Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation.
rob mclennan was born, and currently lives, in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011) and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottwater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
The muezzin, awake to God, awakes us,
Crying; his words splinter inside our ears,
While daylight sparks upon the splintered sea.
Look! The Bosphorus shines like bone. Next, blue dusk
Boils among black palms and gold minarets.
Then, night—fat with stars—shelters an Eden
Of exchange: Flood our mouths with wine and kisses;
That welling fanaticism is Want.
"All of Toronto seemed to have shown up for that awful production!" Phil complained.
"It wasn't so dreadful, was it?" someone asked.
Sybill's eyes lit up, and she almost rose out of her seat to add:
"Yes, and didn't Millie say she saw Christopher Plummer in the lobby?" Everyone turned to her end of the table. This was the first thing she had said since the three couples had arrived from a nearby theatre.
Him: Dirty gypsy. [He spits.]
Kora: This is my spot. Get lost.
Him: I’m not going anywhere
Kora: Find your own spot. [Beat. He stands there. She glowers at him]
Him: Cat got your tongue, dirty gypsy.
Kora: I’m not dirty.
- Alexander Calder
Volunteers for Issue 9
For copy-editing this issue of MTLS thanks:
- Lequanne Collins-Bacchus
- Amanda Tripp
- Claudia Del Balso
Acknowledgement
MTLS is grateful to Jetioluwa Olafimihan (Cotta Red Creative Studio) for her hard work on web development and management.
Dedication
To the memory of Stephen Potts
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