ROUND venue

The Chiaroscuro Reading Series Toronto Branch hosts authors in the SF, fantasy and horror genres. Hosted by Sandra Kasturi. Ukulele virtuosity by Kari Maaren!

Authors reading:

Elyse Friedman has written for screens large and small, radio, magazines and the stage. Her most recent novel, The Answer to Everything, was published by HarperCollins Canada. Elyse's books include Long Story Short; Waking Beauty; Then Again; and Know Your Monkey. Her work has been short-listed for the Trillium Book Award, the Toronto Book Award, the Relit Award and numerous National Magazine awards. Know Your Monkey was a winner of a Foreword Book of the Year award, and The Soother, won a gold National Magazine award for fiction. Elyse is a graduate of the CFC. She has had two feature films produced, one of which premiered at TIFF, the other at the Sundance Film Festival.

Robin Richardson is the author of three collections of poetry, including Sit How You Want (Finalist for the Trillium Book Award / named one of the best books of the year by CBC), and is Editor-in-Chief at Minola Review. Her work has appeared in Salon, POETRY, The American Poetry Review, The Walrus, Hazlitt, Best Canadian Poetry, and Tin House, among others. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, has won the Fortnight Poetry Prize in the U.K., The John B. Santorini Award, The Joan T. Baldwin Award, and has been shortlisted for the CBC, Walrus, and ARC Poetry Prizes, among others. Richardson's work has been adapted to song by Andrew Staniland through The Brooklyn Art Song Society.

Sarah Tolmie is a poet and speculative fiction writer. The Little Animals is her second novel with Aqueduct Press. Other fiction published with them includes The Stone Boatmen, a Crawford nominee in 2014, Two Travelers, and NoFood. 2019 has been a good year for her poetry, as The Art of Dying, her second collection, was nominated for the Griffin Prize, and her elegy for Ursula K. Le Guin is up for an Aurora and a Rhysling Award.

Kari Maaren is as the sparrow's flight through the mead hall, metaphorically speaking. The author of Copper Cylinder-winning Weave a Circle Round, the composer of songs about terrible elves and problematic movie trailers, the creator of time-travel comics that are read by almost six people, Kari is nearly always trying not to mark. She probably doesn't like your shoes.

Note that the Round Venue is not currently accessible--it is on the second floor, up a flight of stairs.