The Drake Hotel

1150 Queen Street West, Toronto

The 2019 season opener is coming to the newly renovated Drake Hotel Underground and you're invited! As always, this night features an open slam and open mic, with signup happening right at 730pm with the host.

Featuring Andrea Thompson from Toronto! She is a teacher, novelist and poet who has been writing and performing her work for over twenty-five years. In 1995 she was featured in the documentary Slamnation, as a member of the country’s first national slam team. In 2005, her spoken word CDOnewas nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award, and in 2009 she was awarded the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word’s Poet of Honour. She is the author of the novel Over Our Heads and co-editor of Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out (both Inanna Publications).Thompson currently teaches at Workman Arts (CAMH), as well as through the Ontario College of Art and Design University and The University of Toronto’s Continuing Studies departments. She has written several critical essays on spoken word, including "Committing the Act of Language: The (R)evolutionary Tactics and Hybridist Anxieties of Spoken Word's Third Wave" (More Caught in the Act, 2016) and "Spoken Word: A Gesture Towards Possibility" (Writing Creative Writing: Essays from the Field,2018). www.andreathompson.ca