Author Archives: Michelle Colistro

Come celebrate what’s good in CanLIt with these three warm, wildly talented readers and their colour-coordinated books! 🌸🔵

Note: There will be no Pivot Wednesday, Jan 31st.

Jeff Kirby’s newest is She’s Having a Doris Day (Knife From Book, 2017). Earlier chapbooks include Simple Enough, Cock & Soul, Bob’s boy, and The world is fucked and sometimes beautiful. Their work appears in numerous anthologies beginning with the letter Q, and most recently online at The Rusty Toque, Matrix Magazine and bandcamp/jeffkirby. Kirby is the owner/publisher of knife | fork | book.
Melanie Mah is a writer in Toronto who was born and raised in Alberta. Her debut novel, The Sweetest One, won the 2017 Trillium Book Award, and her work has been published in Prism International and Ricepaper. She is currently at work on an intergenerational memoir.
Sam Shelstad is a writer from London, Ontario. His stories have appeared in The New Quarterly, Prism International, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. He was longlisted for the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize. Of his debut collection Cop House (Nightwood Editions, 2017), Quill and Quire said, “reads like something out of George Saunders. It is precisely this blend of humour and pathos that give Shelstad’s stories their disarming power.” Sam lives in Toronto.

Hosted by Michelle Brown & Canisia Lubrin
Doors at 8!
PWYC (Suggested $5)
The Tranzac is an accessible & inclusive venue.

Dreary weather makes the Tranzac even cozier – join Marianne Apostolides, Faye Chisholm Guenther & Guillaume Morissette for a Pivot to remember. 💛

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Marianne Apostolides is the author of six books, three of which have been translated. Her latest book, Deep Salt Water, is a surrealistic memoir about loss, abortion, and the oceans. Apostolides is a recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and the winner of the 2017 K.M. Hunter Award for Literature.

Faye Chisholm Guenther has published short fiction in literary journals including Joyland and Plenitude. In 2017, Junction Books published her chapbook, Flood Lands. Faye lives in Toronto where she teaches English and Literary Studies at Sheridan College.

Guillaume Morissette is the author of The Original Face (Véhicule Press, 2017), one of The Globe and Mail’s best books for 2017, and New Tab (Véhicule, 2014), a finalist for the 2015 Amazon.ca First Novel Award. New Tab was also translated and published in French (Éditions du Boréal, 2016). His work has appeared in Maisonneuve Magazine, Vice, Electric Literature, The Millions, The Walrus, Nouveau Projet, Funhouse Magazine, The Quietus and many other publications. He lives in Montreal.

Hosted by Canisia Lubrin & Michelle Brown

PWYC (suggested $5)
Doors at 8
The Tranzac is an accessible and inclusive venue

We’re back in biz, folks. Come hear Ralph Kolewe, Mark Sampson, Kate Sutherland and Jessica Westhead kick off another year of Pivot.

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Kate Sutherland’s first collection of poems, How to Draw a Rhinoceros, was shortlisted for a Creative Writing Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2016 and is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing 2018. She is host and producer of the podcast On the Line: Conversations About Poetry. She lives in Toronto, where she teaches at Osgoode Hall Law School.

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Ralph Kolewe lives in Toronto, where he shares a house with a cat named Charlotte. He has published two books of poetry, Afterletters (BookThug 2014) and Inspecting Nostalgia (Talon Books 2017).

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Jessica Westhead’s fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, selected for
the Journey Prize anthology, and nominated for a National Magazine Award. She is the author of the novel Pulpy & Midge (Coach House Books, 2007) and the critically acclaimed short story collection And Also Sharks (Cormorant Books, 2011), which was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book and a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Short Fiction Prize. Her new short story collection is called Things Not to Do.

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Mark Sampson is the author of five books: the novels The Slip (Dundurn Press, 2017), Sad Peninsula, (Dundurn Press, 2014), and Off Book (Norwood Publishing, 2007), the short story collection, The Secrets Men Keep (Now or Never Publishing, 2015), and the poetry collection, Weathervane, (Palimpsest Press, 2016). Mark has published many short stories and poems in literary journals across Canada, including in The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, PRISM international, The Nashwaak Review, The Puritan, This magazine, and FreeFall. He is a frequent book reviewer for Quill & Quire, Canadian Notes & Queries (CNQ) and other publications. Born and raised on Prince Edward Island, he currently lives and writes in Toronto.

Doors at 8.
PWYC (Suggested $5)
Tiki Room, at the club Tranzac Club (an accessible and inclusive venue)

*This Pivot is on a Thursday!*

It’s the last Pivot of the year & it’s a doozy – Anita Dolman, Naben Ruthnum, Kevin Hardcastle & Domenica Martinello come together to raise glasses & voices to a year of great literature.

PLUS: We’ll set up a table at the back as an informal book swap. Bring one+, take one+!

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Anita Dolman’s poetry and fiction have appeared in journals and anthologies throughout North America, including Canadian Ginger, Matrix Magazine, On Spec, Grain, PRISM international and Triangulation: Lost Voices. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, and was a finalist for the 2015 Alberta Magazine Award for fiction. Lost Enough (Morning Rain Publishing, 2017) is Anita’s debut short fiction collection.

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Kevin Hardcastle is a fiction writer from Simcoe County, Ontario. He was a finalist for the 2012 Journey Prize, and his stories have been published widely. Hardcastle’s debut short story collection, Debris, won the Trillium Book Award and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. His novel, In the Cage, has recently been published by Biblioasis.

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Domenica Martinello, a poet from Montreal, was a finalist for the 2017 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the winner of the carte blanche 3Macs prize. Currently completing an MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her debut collection, All Day I Dream About Sirens, is forthcoming with Coach House Books in 2019.

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Naben Ruthnum won the Journey Prize for his short fiction, has been a National Post books columnist, and has written books and cultural criticism for the Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, and the Walrus. His crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Joyland, and his pseudonym Nathan Ripley’s first novel will appear in 2018. Ruthnum lives in Toronto.

PWYC: Suggested $5
The Tranzac club is an accessible venue.
Doors at 8 PM.