Rob Benvie is from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and currently lives in Montreal. He has recorded and performed with many musical endeavours, including the rock bands Thrush Hermit, Camouflage Nights and The Dears. He is the author of the novels Safety of War and Maintenance, both from Coach House. Maintenance is a apocalyptic journey to the suburbs of 1999, complete with ex-volleyball champs, Empowerment Expos, Robitussin binges and the Do It Dynamic! self-improvement campaign. But it’s more than just that: it’s a look at a suburban family falling apart, people losing their grip on what it means to live in a world that exists in a continual state of conflict. The National Post, who recently compared the book to works by Coupland, DeLillo and Franzen, said, ‘There is a lively use of language and a well-handled scheme of metaphors throughout … but this is also a novel with a real sting in its tail.”

Lynn McClory attended UWO and graduated with a BA in English from the University of Toronto in the dark ages. She was a member of the collectively managed SCM Book Room in Toronto for close to a decade, later founded a sales agency for university publishers and travelled Canada to its many bookstores twice a year for twenty years, when bookstores were a force for theory and literature in Canada. Since winding down her job in 2007, she spends more hours reading than writing, is a perpetual student at Margaret Christakos’ Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon and has participated in many workshops at the Toronto New School of Writing where she learned more ways to steal than she had imagined. She has had poems published in BafterC poetry magazine, Ars Medica, industrial sabatoge, the Quarry Press anthology, Garden Variety, online with blissfultimes.ca, and writes poetics for the Influency online magazine. Lynn is a member of the Influency magazine Editorial Group.

Angela Szczepaniak is doctoral candidate at the University at Buffalo, where she is neck-deep in a dissertation on innovative poetry, detective fiction, and comic books. Her first book is a novel-in-poems, called Unisex Love Poems. In addition to publishing poetry and critical essays, she recently participated in a hygiene themed poetry-art project with LOCCAL, and as a result her visual poetry can be found on placards in some of the finest public restrooms in Seattle. At the moment, she lives in Toronto, where she thinks about being ravaged by time’s withered claw. Her latest book is The QWERTY Institute of Cosmetic Typographical Enhancements from BookThug, a collection of “visual fictions” that gives insight into the secret lives of letters.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Rob Benvie, Lynn McClory, and Angela Szczepaniak
Wednesday, March 7
850 Dundas Street West
8 PM
PWYC
Hosted by Sachiko Murakami

Jennifer LoveGrove is the author of poetry collections The Dagger Between Her Teeth (ECW Press) and I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel (ECW Press). She has recently completed a novel and is currently at work on a new manuscript of poetry. Her writing has been published widely, most recently in THIS Magazine, Taddle Creek and The Puritan Magazine. In 2010 she was shortlisted for the K. M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature. For several years, she produced and hosted the literary radio show “In Other Words” on CKLN 88.1FM, and for a decade, she edited and published the literary zine dig. Currently, she divides her time between downtown Toronto and rural Haliburton, and can be found online at jenniferlovegrove.com

David Seymour’s first book, Inter Alia (Brick Books), was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. Some of the poems in Inter Alia were used as lyrics by the roots-rock band The Warped 45s for their debut album 10 Day Poem for Saskatchewan. Recently his poetry was short-listed for the 2009 CBC Literary Award, and thrice now has been included in the Anthology of Best Canadian Poetry. David’s second book, For Display Purposes Only, will be released by Coach House in 2013. He currently lives in Toronto where he works in the film industry.

Nathan Whitlock is the author of A Week of This: a novel in seven days (ECW Press). His fiction, reviews, essays and journalism have appeared in The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve, Toro, Geist, Fashion, Quill & Quire and elsewhere. He is currently the culture editor for Toronto Life magazine.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Jennifer LoveGrove, David Seymour, and Nathan Whitlock
Wednesday, February 22
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Meira Cook’s  poetry collections include A Fine Grammar of Bones (Turnstone 1993), Toward A Catalogue of Falling (Brick 1996), Slovenly Love (Brick 2003), and A Walker in the City (Brick 2011).  She has published a book of literary criticism, Writing Lovers: Reading Canadian Love Poetry by Women (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), and edited and introduced a selection of Don McKay’s poetry entitled Field Marks: The Poetry of Don McKay (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006).  Her poetry won first place in the CBC Literary Awards in 2007, has been published in The Best Canadian Poetry of 2008, and has been featured in Winnipeg Transit’s “Poetry in Motion” program.  She has been the Poetry Editor of Prairie Fire magazine and teaches creative writing classes at the University of Manitoba.  http://www.brickbooks.ca/?page_id=3&bookid=231

Dani Couture is the author of two collections of poetry: GOOD MEAT (Pedlar Press, 2006) and SWEET (Pedlar Press, 2010). SWEET was named one of Maisy’s Best Books of 2010 by Maisonneuve Magazine, was nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and won the ReLit Award for poetry. In 2011, Dani also received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Grant.  Her debut novel, ALGOMA, was published in fall 2011 by Invisible Publishing.

Sarah Pinder lives in Toronto. A zine maker of more than a decade, her work has been shortlisted for the Expozine Small Press Awards and NOW Magazine’s Best of Toronto. You can find her writing in the anthology She’s Shameless, journals like Room, Canadian Woman Studies and invisible city, and Montreal’s Distroboto art vending machines. Her book Cutting Room is forthcoming with Coach House Press, in fall 2012.   http://bitsofstring.wordpress.com/

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Meira Cook, Dani Couture, and Sarah Pinder
Wednesday, February 8
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Robert Dayton is a multidisciplinary writer, entertainer, and artist from BC who resides for the moment in Toronto. His work has appeared in Hunter and Cook, Carousel, The Toronto Onion, Roctober, Cinema Sewer, Paper Rodeo, Bananafish, as well as the book Lost In the Grooves and elsewhere. He originally came from a zine background in the early 90s, wrote a weekly newspaper column of ephemera that soon bordered on experimental fiction and non-fiction, and was a co-creator of the short-lived but well loved newspaper The Drippy Gazette. He is known for being in such curious musical acts as Wet Dirt, Canned Hamm and July Fourth Toilet, as well as acting in the films Male Fantasy, Ivory Tower, and Leslie My Name Is Evil. Robert’s most recent project is his series of videos and performances as the persona of The Canadian Romantic, a melodramatic figure of faded glamour who tries to bridge and explore the gap between Canada and romance with somewhat dubious results. This has now resulted in a  doll as well as an art book of pen-and-ink drawings and writings published by PITT studio/Publication Projects.

Andrew Faulkner lives in Toronto, where he curates The Emergency Response Unit, a chapbook press, with Leigh Nash. He also collects sky metaphors and their ilk at thebigceiling.tumblr.com and is a partner in the editorial services firm Re:word Communications.

Andrew McEwan is the author of repeater, forthcoming in the spring of 2012 from BookThug, and the chapbook Input / Output from Cactus Press. His writing was awarded the E.J. Pratt Poetry Medal. He is currently finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, where he has been the Editor-in-Chief at the Acta Victoriana Literary Journal and Poetry Editor at The Hart House Review. repeater is his first book.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Robert Dayton, Andrew Faulkner, and Andrew McEwan
Wednesday, January 25
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
8 PM
PWYC

Michael Lista is the author of Bloom. He is also the Poetry Editor of The Walrus, and he writes a popular monthly column, On Poetry, for the National Post.

Jacob McArthur Mooney moved back to Toronto last week after three months as the Pierre Berton Fellow in Dawson City, Yukon and three months drinking mulled wine in various cities around Europe. His second poetry collection, Folk, was released this year by McClelland & Stewart. Folk was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas International Prize and named a Globe & Mail Top 100 Book of 2011.

Paul Vermeersch‘s latest collection of poems, The Reinvention of the Human Hand, was published by McClelland & Stewart in March 2010 and was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. He is also the author of the poetry collections Burn (ECW Press, 2000), a finalist for the 2001 Gerald Lampert Award, The Fat Kid (ECW Press, 2002), and Between the Walls (McClelland & Stewart, 2005). He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph, and his poems have been translated into Polish, German and French.  He lives in Toronto where he currently teaches at Sheridan College.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Michael Lista, Jacob McArthur Mooney, and Paul Vermeersch.
Wednesday, January 11
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

David McGimpsey was born and raised in Montreal. Li’l Bastard, his latest collection, was named a book of the year by the Quill & Quire. He is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry, including Lardcake and Sitcom (now in its second printing), which was a finalist for both the A.M. Klein Prize and the ReLit Award. David is also the author of the award-winning study Imagining Baseball: America’s Pastime and Popular Culture. McGimpsey writes a regular humour column for Montreal’s Matrix Magazine and the ‘Sandwich of the Month’ column as a contributing editor for EnRoute. David lives in the Mile-End district of Montreal and teaches creative writing and literature at Concordia University.

Leigh Nash is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and administrator. A graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA in Creative Writing program, she is a partner in the editing firm Re:word Communications, a co-founder of The Emergency Response Unit, and the Coach House Books publishing assistant. Her work has appeared in various print and online journals, and Goodbye, Ukelele is her first book.

Carey Toane is a journalist and poet. Her poems and translations have appeared in Canadian journals, chapbooks, and anthologies. She is the co-founder of the mechanical journal Toronto Poetry Vendors and the original host of Toronto reading series Pivot at the Press Club. Originally from Alberta, she has also lived in Finland, the Middle East and New York City. She is currently studying library science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. The Crystal Palace is her first book.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring David McGimpsey, Leigh Nash and Carey Toane
Wednesday, December 14
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Barry Dempster, twice nominated for the Governor General’s Award, is the author of sixteen books. His collection The Burning Alphabet won the Canadian Authors’ Association Chalmers Award for Poetry in 2005. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Ontario Premiers Award for Excellence in the Arts. He is also Acquisitions Editor for Brick Books and teaches writing workshops from Banff, Alberta to Santiago, Chile. His most recent books include Love Outlandish, Ivan’s Birches and Blue Wherever. His new collection, Dying a Little, was published by Wolsak & Wynn in September.

Steve McOrmond has published three books of poetry. His most recent collection, The Good News about Armageddon (Brick Books, 2010), was short-listed for the 2011 ReLit Award. His previous collection, Primer on the Hereafter (Wolsak and Wynn, 2006), was awarded the Atlantic Poetry Prize. He lives in Toronto and can be found online at www.stevemcormond.com.

Tanis Rideout is a poet and novelist – she has been commissioned by and toured with Sarah Harmer and Gord Downie in support of environmental causes on the Niagara Escarpment and Lake Ontario. In 2005, she was named Poet Laureate of Lake Ontario by the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper. An excerpt of her poems Arguments with the Lake placed second in the 2010 CBC Literary Awards. Her first novel – Above All Things – will be released in March with McClelland and Stewart.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Feauturing Barry Dempster, Steve McOrmond, and Tanis Rideout
Wednesday, November 30
8 PM
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
Hosted by Sachiko Murakami
PYWC

Cris Costa recently returned to Toronto, after living in Vancouver as a writer, scholar, and arts and cultural worker. She recently completed a poetry chapbook, liv-id-in-wake, with Heavy Industries, and writes fiction. She likes coffee and wine, but not together.

Hal Niedzviecki is a writer, speaker, culture commentator and editor whose work challenges preconceptions and confronts readers with the offenses of everyday life. He is the author of eight books including the collection of short stories Look Down, This is Where it Must Have Happened (City Lights, April 2011) and the nonfiction book The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (City Lights, 2009). The Peep Diaries was made into a television documentary entitled Peep Culture produced for the CBC. He is the current fiction editor and the founder of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. Hal’s writing has appeared in newspapers, periodicals and journals across the world including the New York Times Magazine, Playboy, the Utne Reader, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Toronto Life, Walrus, Geist, and This Magazine. Niedzviecki is committed to exploring the human condition through provocative fiction and non-fiction that charts the media saturated terrain of ever shifting multiple identities at the heart of our fragmenting age. For excerpts, reviews, samples of past articles and more, visit Hal’s website: www.smellit.ca.

Robin Richardson recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in many Canadian and American journals, including CV2, Dandelion, Berkeley Poetry Review and The Westchester Review. Her first poetry collection, Grunt of the Minotaur, was published by Insomniac Press this year.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Cris Costa, Hal Niedzviecki, and Robin Richardson
Wednesday, November 16
8 PM
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Gary Barwin (English pronunciation: Gary Barwin] is an English-language author of short stories, poems, and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, do not regard Barwin as one of the best writers of the 20th century. The term “Barwinesque” has not become part of the English language. Barwin was born to middle class Jewish parents in Northern Ireland, then part of the British Empire. The house in which he was born, on Eden Vale Park next to Molly and Jack Gordon’s, does not contain a permanent exhibition devoted to the author. Most of Barwin’s writing, much of it unfinished before publication, was subsequently finished by the time of publication. No one ignored his wishes to destroy his work by fire. He did not request it. Yet.

[EDS NOTE: Ahem. Gary's latest books are the Porcupinity of the Stars (Coach House 2010); with Gregory Betts, The Obvious (BookThug 2011) and Franzlations: and with Craig Conley and Hugh Thomas, The Imaginary Kafka Parables (New Star).

Nancy Jo Cullen is the 4th recipient of the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Grant for Emerging Gay Writer. Her short story collection, Canary, was shortlisted for the 2010-2011 Metcalf Rooke Award. She is the author of three critically acclaimed collections of poetry with Calgary’s Frontenac House Press. She has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the Writers Guild of Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the W.O. Mitchell Calgary Book Prize. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph-Humber in 2010.
Holly Luhning’s first novel, Quiver (HarperCollins) was published in early 2011. She has received a Saskatchewan Lieutenant- Governor’s Arts Award, and her collection of poetry, Sway (Thistledown), was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature, and teaches creative writing at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, and currently lives in Toronto.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring Gary Barwin, Nancy Jo Cullen, and Holly Luhning
Hosted by Sachiko Murakami
Wednesday, November 2
8 PM
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC

David Brock is the winner of the 2011 Herman Voaden Playwrighting Competition. His poetry chapbooks are Gasmask Summer (The Emergency Response Unit) and Black Metal Melody (Ferno House). He has written libretto for operas that have been performed in Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, Glasgow, and London. He is currently writing text for a black metal opera (bands and sopranos wanted).

Anna Chatterton is a performer, playwright and librettist. She is currently playwright in residence at Tarragon Theatre and is working on a new commissioned opera for Soundstreams. Anna’s work has been commissioned and produced by various theatres, opera and music companies and festivals in Toronto and across Canada including; The Canadian Opera Company, World Stage/Harbourfront Centre, Tapestry New Opera, Theatre Passe Muraille, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, The Theatre Centre, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, VOICE ++ in Victoria, and The Sound Symposium in Newfoundland.

Aisha Sasha John is the author of The Shining Material (BookThug 2011) and curator of the online gallery BOOM FOR REAL (hugetime.tumblr.com). Currently, she’s working on a novel-in-verse called Anyone Else’s Velvet.

Pivot Readings at the Press Club
Featuring David Brock, Anna Chatterton, and Aisha Sasha John
Hosted by Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Wednesday, October 19
8 PM
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
PWYC