Author Archives: torontopoetryvendors

Pivot blasts off into summer with a quick-cut reading extravaganza: in other words, 3 hot girls and George Murray! Come out and hear two poets read poems, one poet read from her novel-in-progress, and one literary voyeur cut you in on her Peeping Julie escapades. Pivot Host Elisabeth de Mariaffi is about to blast off into a new Atlantic life on the island of Newfoundland, so come out and have a drink and say goodbye, while we’re at it.

George Murray’s six books of poetry include Whiteout (ECW, 2012), Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms (ECW, 2010), The Rush to Here (Nightwood, 2007),The Hunter (McClelland & Stewart, 2003). He has been widely anthologized and has published poems and fiction in journals and magazines in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe. He has won or been shortlisted for several awards, and he has been on the part time faculty at University of Toronto, New School University, and Humber College. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland. From 2003 to 2011, he was the editor and operator of the popular literary website Bookninja.com, but he is most famously Pivot host Elisabeth’s new boyfriend. You can find him at http://georgemurray.wordpress.com/.

Meaghan Strimas  is the editor of The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen, and the author of two collections of poetry, Junkman’s Daughter and A Good Time Had By All (all Exile Editions). At work on a new poetry book, and a novel, Strimas lives, works, and writes in Toronto.

GIllian Wigmore is the author of two books of poems: soft geography (Caitlin Press, 2007), which won the 2008 ReLit Award, and Dirt of Ages (Nightwood, 2012). Her poems and non-fiction have appeared in journals and anthologies and been nominated and short-listed for many awards including the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize for Poetry and the Great BC Novel Prize. She lives in north-central BC and has fewer farm animals than you would assume.

Julie Wilson is The Book Madam, a self-professed “professional publishing fan” living and working in Toronto. She’s the past Online Marketing Manager for House of Anansi Press and recent Host of the CBC Book Club. She thinks reading looks good on you.
Seen Reading has been featured in/on or at The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC and as part of a guerrilla media campaign that resulted in 100 transit readers receiving a Kobo e-reader just for reading in public.
Follow Julie on Twitter: @BookMadam and @SeenReading. Post your own reader sightings using the hashtag #seenreading.
Julie’s website: www.seenreading.com

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring George Murray, Meaghan Strimas, Gillian Wigmore, and Julie Wilson
Wednesday, June 27
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Three poets and a novelist walk into a bar…

Punchline to follow on May 2, as Pivot welcomes Gabe Foreman, Catherine Owen, Steven Price, and Claire Tacon to the Press Club for a night of spring revelry and literary madness. Or literary goodness. Anyway, there’ll be some revelry, and some literature, and it’s a bar. You’re coming, right?

Gabe Foreman was born in Thunder Bay. He has worked as a tree planter in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, and is the author of one collection of poetry, A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People (Coach House Books, 2011). He’s a co-founder of littlefishcartpress, and his writing has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Grain, Fiddlehead and Event. His work placed second in CV2’s two-day poem contest and a selection was shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards. Currently, he lives in Montreal, where he manages the soup kitchen at a long-established mission.

Catherine Owen is from Vancouver. She’s published nine collections of poetry as well as the new Catalysts (Wolsak and Wynn, 2012), a collection of prose, essays, and memoirs. Her work has won the Alberta Book Prize and been nominated for the BC Book Prize, the CBC Award and the Re-lit. She plays metal bass and collaborates with multimedia artists, including Sydney Lancaster who created the cover of Catalysts, the book she will be reading from at Pivot. P.S. Her website is www.catherineowen.org.

Steven Price‘s newest collection of poetry is Omens in the Year of the Ox (Brick Books, 2012). His first collection, Anatomy of Keys (Brick Books, 2006), won the Gerald Lampert Award and was named a Globe & Mail Book of the Year. His first novel, Into that Darkness (Thomas Allen, 2011), has recently been nominated for the Ethel Wilson Award. His work has been translated into several languages, including German, French, and Hungarian. He teaches writing at the University of Victoria.

Claire Tacon is the winner of the 2010 Metcalf-Rooke award for her first novel, In the Field (Biblioasis, 2010). Her fiction has been short-listed for the Bronwen Wallace Award and the Playboy College Fiction Contest, and has appeared in journals such as The New Quarterly and sub-TERRAIN. She is a past fiction editor of the magazine PRISM international and is a lecturer at St. Jerome’s University.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Gabe Foreman, Catherine Owen, Steven Price, and Claire Tacon
Wednesday, May 2
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

April showers? Put down those umbrellas and put back a spring cocktail of all new work as Pivot brings you first-time novelist Grace O’Connell, and helps The Emergency Response Unit launch new poetry chapbooks by Julie Cameron Gray and Matthew Tierney.

Julie Cameron Gray has published poems in Carousel, Lichen, The Windsor Review, Queens Quarterly, The Amethyst Review and a chapbook with Cactus Press (2006), entitled The Distance Between Two Bodies. Her first full-length book of poetry will be released by Tightrope Books in Spring 2013. She is a contributing editor for Misunderstandings Magazine, and is originally from Sudbury, Ontario.

Grace O’Connell is the Contributing Editor for Open Book Toronto. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, and her work has appeared in publications including The Walrus, Taddle Creek and EYE Weekly. Her first novel, Magnified World, is forthcoming in May 2012 as part of Random House Canada’s New Face of Fiction program.

Matthew Tierney is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently The Hayflick Limit (Coach House Books), which was shortlisted for a Trillium Book Award. His next book, titled Probably Inevitable, considers the science and philosophy of time. It will come out Fall 2012. He lives in Toronto.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Julie Cameron Gray, Grace O’Connell, and Matthew Tierney
Wednesday, April 4
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi