Campbell House
We're in a fortunate year of many visitations from authors travelling from afar. June, 2019 will shall no different! All the way from Cornerbrook, NL, we are joined this month by CBC reporter, Lindsay Bird, sharing work from her debut poetry publication, Boom Time, just released by Gaspereau Press! We also be joined by U of T creative writing MA graduate and accomplished musician, James Irwin! And for the very first time, Common Readings is very happy to welcome Toronto favourite, Catherine Graham, a much-lauded and highly acclaimed poet and fiction author. Come for the Words and the Wine!!!
LINDSAY BIRD
JAMES IRWIN
CATHERINE GRAHAM
Doors: 7pm Pay-What-You-Can
LINDSAY BIRD is a poet and journalist living in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Event, Geist, and The New Quarterly. Boom Time is her first book, partly inspired by her years spent working at construction sites near Fort McMurray. It's out now on Gaspereau Press.
JAMES IRWIN writes songs, poems, and stories. He has an MA in creative writing from the University of Toronto and will soon complete a novel titled My Mother is a Fish about being abducted by his mother and taken to hide in a religious commune in Oklahoma as a child. He has released six albums of songs under his own name and under pseudonyms. Stars Blue Wheel, a new album of cosmic country songs, will be released later in 2019.
CATHERINE GRAHAM’s sixth poetry collection The Celery Forest was named a CBC Best Book of the Year, appears on their Ultimate Canadian Poetry list and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her debut novel Quarry won an Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for Fiction, “The Very Best!” Book Awards for Best Fiction and was a finalist for the CAA’s Fred Kerner Book Award and 2018 Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction. Winner of the TIFA’s Poetry NOW competition, she’s appeared on CBC radio’s The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers and currently leads the TIFA Book Club. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award and also at Humber College’s Creative Book Publishing Program. Aether: an Out-of-Body Lyric will be published next year. Visit her at www.catherinegraham.com. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @catgrahampoet.