Author Archives: Sachiko

It’s Sachiko’s last Pivot. Sniff. She’s brought la belle province to Dundas West for her goodbye (or should we say… au revoir) party. Le yay!  Montrealer Darren Bifford will read from his newly released first poetry collection, Wedding in Fire Country. Ex-Montrealer Susan Glickman reads from The Smooth Yarrow (Vehicule 2012). And Stephanie Bolster (of Pointe-Claire, but we’ll call that Montreal) reads from A Page From the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick 2011). Come on down to the Press Club for farewell hugs and fantastic readings – and to find out who will be your new host in Fall 2012…

Darren Bifford is originally from Summerland, BC. His work has been published in a variety of journals across Canada. He’s also the author of Wolf Hunter, a chapbook published by Cactus Press (2010). Wedding in Fire Country is his first collection of poetry. Darren currently lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Stephanie Bolster’s first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General’s and the Gerald Lampert Awards in 1998. Her other books are Two Bowls of Milk won the Archibald Lampman Award, Pavilion, and most recently A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick 2011). Raised in Burnaby, B.C., she now teaches at Concordia University and lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec.

Susan Glickman has won both the Gabrielle Roy Prize and the Raymond Klibansky Prize for her work of literary criticism The Picturesque & the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape. Her first novel, The Violin Lover (Goose Lane, 2006) won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction. She is the author of six poetry collections with Vehicule Press, most recently The Smooth Yarrow(2012). She teaches creative writing and is a freelance editor. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Darren Bifford, Stephanie Bolster, and Susan Glickman
Wednesday, July 11
The Press Club (850 Dundas Street West)
8 PM
PYWC

Get your hot self down to the Press Club on June 13, when three blazing writers – Tamara Faith Berger (Maidenhead), Alessandro Porco (The Minutes I-X) and Moez Surani (Floating Life). Sachiko Murakami hosts – and may just bring her water spritzer to combat the sparks that will be a-flying!

Tamara Faith Berger was born in Toronto. She wrote porn stories for a living and attempted to make dirty films before publishing her first book, Lie with Me, in 1999. In 2001, The Way of the Whore, her second book, was published. In 2004, Lie with Me was made into a film. Maidenhead, recently released from Coach House, is her third book. Berger is presently working on a novel about a Russian hired killer. She is a graduate student at UBC working on her Masters of Fine Arts.

Alessandro Porco is the author of two collections of poetry, The Jill Kelly Poems (2005) and Augustine in Carthage (2008), both published by ECW Press. BookThug recently published a chapbook of poems, The Minutes: I-X (2011). And ECW will publish The Minutes: I-XL, just as soon as he’s finished writing it. He holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo and is currently employed as a Visiting Assistant Professor in upstate New York, in the shadow of the Adirondacks.

Moez Surani is a poet, reviewer and short fiction author. His writing has been included in numerous anthologies and literary journals, including The Literary Review of Canada and The Walrus. He has attended writing residencies in Finland, Latvia and Switzerland, and his writing has won the Chalmers Arts Fellowship, the Kingston Literary Award and the Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest. He has published two poetry collections: Reticent Bodies (2009) and Floating Life (2012), both with Wolsak and Wynn.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Tamara Faith Berger, Alessandro Porco, and Moez Surani
Wednesday, June 13
The Press Club (850 Dundas Street West)
8 PM
PWYC ($5 suggested donation)
Hosted by Sachiko Murakami

Pivot fans, get in the receiving line! On May 30 we welcome two far-flung visitors, Massachusetts-based writers Sarah Goldstein and Joshua Harmon. We also welcome Jamie Popowich, Metraville’s ambassador to Toronto. Come represent Toronto as we strengthen our international literary relations.

Sarah Goldstein was born in Toronto and now lives in Massachusetts. Her writing has appeared in Bateau, Barrow Street, Caketrain, and Denver Quarterly, and is forthcoming in the online journal Anti-. Her first book, Fables, was released in 2011 from Tarpaulin Sky. Originally trained as an artist, she has exhibited her artwork in the US and Canada.

Joshua Harmon is the author of two books of poems-Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie and Scape-and a novel, Quinnehtukqut. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in journals such as Agni, The Believer, Colorado Review, New England Review, The Normal School, TriQuarterly, and Verse, and he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. He lives in western Massachusetts.

Jamie Popowich is the author of the short fiction collection Metraville (Insomniac Press). Popowich has also produced the documentary Run Run It’s Him.

In Metraville, Popowich creates an absurd and delightful”fake-believe” city. In a recent review, Broken Pencil says: Popowich pulls together an engaging world with an often playful twist. But Metraville is no mere confection piece: underneath all the fun lies some biting social criticism and big questions. By the time we meet the accused thief, his lawyer and the presiding judge who inhabit the centre of the book, we’re shown that for all its absurdities, Metraville is also addressing Toronto’s uncertain fate: “Because whose fault is all this really? And by ‘all this,’ I mean your own befuddled life.”

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Sarah Goldstein, Joshua Harmon, and Jamie Popowich
Wednesday, May 30
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
8 PM
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi