Free Times Cafe,

Our Feature Readers:

Keith Garebian Having first made his reputation as a freelance literary and theatre critic, Keith Garebian of Mississauga turned seriously to writing poetry only after publishing his postmodernist memoir, Pain: Journeys Around My Parents (2000), about his Armenian father, Anglo-Indian mother, and Bombay background. He now has 26 books to date, eight of which are poetry collections, such as Frida: Paint Me as a Volcano (Buschek, 2004), Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems (Signature, 2008), Children of Ararat (Frontenac, 2010) Poetry is Blood (Guernica 2018), and his latest, Against Forgetting (Frontenac, 2019). Several of his poems have been anthologized in Canada and the U.S., and one of his Jarman poems was set to music last year for choir and instruments by Gregory Spears, in the company of a poem each by Thomas Merton and Denise Levertov. Garebian has been shortlisted for the grit/Lit Freefall magazine, and the Gwendolyn MacEwen/Exile poetry awards, and some of his poems have been translated into French, Armenian, Hebrew, Bulgarian, and Romanian.

Laura Cok t.b.a.

Stan Rogul Stan Rogal was born in Vancouver and now lives and writes in Toronto. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US and Europe. He is the author of 25 books: 6 novels, 7 story and 12 poetry. In a former life, he organized and hosted the popular Idler Pub Reading Series in Toronto. He is retired from UofT where he worked with students and health professionals, teaching and assessing communication skills.