(Or listings for: All Artists involved in QAF 2011 | Facilitators | Performers | Visual Artists | Writers)
Afuwa Granger self-portrait
Afuwa Granger is a visual artist, youth art facilitator and writer who uses myth and constructions of identity to question just about everything. She started out by writing all over her canvases, and finally stopped painting over the words.
Writer Amber Dawn
Amber Dawn is a writer, filmmaker and performance artist based in Vancouver. She is the author of the novel Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), editor of the Lambda Award-nominated Fist of the Spider Woman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) and co-editor of With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005).
Writer Bill Richardson
Bill Richardson is a writer and broadcaster. He lives in Vancouver where he hosts weekend classical music programming for CBC Radio 2. “Do You Want What I Have Got?” a revue he co-wrote with Veda Hille, will be performed at the Arts Club Revue stage early in 2012. He was recently fired as a columnist (not communist) by Readers Digest.
Writer C.E. Gatchalian
C. E. Gatchalian has been Playwright-in-Residence at the Playhouse Theatre Company and the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver, and Writer-in-Residence at the Berton House Writers’ Retreat in Dawson City, Yukon. His plays, which include Broken, Crossing, Claire and Motifs & Repetitions, have appeared on stages nationally and internationally, as well as on radio and television. His play for young audiences, People Like Vince, commissioned by Green Thumb Theatre, is touring schools next spring, and the world premiere of his play Falling in Time will be produced by Screaming Weenie Productions this November. His latest book, Crossing & Other Plays, was published earlier this year by Lethe Press. A Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2003, he is currently Producer at Neworld Theatre.
Read more on C. E. Gatchalian…
Writer Carol Guess
Guess is the author of seven books of poetry and prose, as well as four forthcoming collections: Darling Endangered, Doll Studies: Forensics, Willful Machine, and My Father In Water. She is Associate Professor of English at Western Washington University, and lives with her spouse, Elizabeth J. Colen, on the Washington coast. Follow her here: www.carolguess.blogspot.com
Christopher CookAuthor, Clean Sheets 2011: The Better Parts of Mourning
For 69 seconds with Christopher Cook, go to gayvancouver.net
Christopher is a Vancouver based writer and performer. He received his theatre training from Concordia University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Read more on Christopher Cook…
Reading in Queerotica, August 8
Daniel Zomparelli is the editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine. He writes and works with magazines across Vancouver including Geist, Megaphone Magazine, Sad Mag, Granville Online and formerly Adbusters. His first book of poems Davie Street Translations is forthcoming from Talonbooks. You can email him at editor@poetryisdead.ca.
Read more on Daniel Zomparelli…
Darah TietelAuthor, Clean Sheets 2011: Marla’s Party Aug 2
Darrah Teitel is an award winning playwright, whose work has been produced nationally and internationally. Teitel is also performer, dramaturge and community theatre facilitator. She is the founder of Rabiayshna, a company dedicated to radical theatre and community projects. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the National Theatre School.
So, I write for money. I string words together for cash. I also type for joy. I refuse to admit that I’m procrastinating a novel.
I worked as Xtra West newspaper’s monthly queer and kinky sex columnist 2002 – 2006. I wrote several full length feature articles on sexuality during that time, plus other articles and columns.
Writer Elizabeth Colen
Elizabeth J. Colen is the author of Lambda Literary Award-nominated prose poetry collection Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010) and flash fiction chapbook Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011). She lives on the Northwest coast of Washington State, serves as poetry editor of Thumbnail Magazine, and occasionally blogs at elizabethjcolen.blogspot.com.
Read more on Elizabeth J. Colen…
Author, Clean Sheets 2011: Unstuck, Aug 9
Evan trained at York University, Sheridan College, and has his professional Training Certificate in Theatre of the Oppressed from Cardboard Citizens in London, England, where he trained with Augusto Boal himself (still one of his favourite experiences). He is also an alumni and member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, the Tarragon Playwright’s Unit and the Co-founder/Artistic Director of the Directors Lab North.
Hiromi GotoReading in Queerotica, August 8
Hiromi’s first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms (1994), received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canada region and was co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her second novel,The Kappa Child (2001), was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Regional Book, and was awarded the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her first children’s novel, The Water of Possibility, was also published that year. Hopeful Monsters, a collection of short stories, was released in 2004. Her latest novel, Half World, received the 2010 Sunburst Award and has been longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her long poem, co-written with David Bateman, came out in Fall 2009. Wait Until Late Afternoon is her first book-length poetry publication.
Writer Jen Currin
Jen Currin was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and did her schooling at Bard College (B.A.), Arizona State (M.F.A.) and Simon Fraser University (M.A.) Jen currently lives in Vancouver, B.C., where she teaches writing and literature at Vancouver Community College and creative writing at Kwantlen University and for Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio. Jen has published three books of poetry: The Sleep of Four Cities (Anvil Press, 2005); Hagiography (Coach House, 2008); and The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010), which is shortlisted for the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (B.C. Book Prizes), the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, and the Audre Lorde Award.
Writer John Barton
John Barton has published nine books of poetry, most recently Hymn (Brick, 2009). In 2012, JackPine will release his chapbook, Balletomane: The Program Notes of Lincoln Kirstein and Nightwood Editions will publish a selected poems. His writing has won three Archibald Lampman Awards, the Patricia Hackett Prize (University of Western Australia), an Ottawa Book Award, a CBC Literary Award, and a National Magazine Award.
Writer Kevin Dale McKeownReading in Queerotica, August 8
Vancouver-born (1950) Kevin Dale McKeown has enjoyed a varied career in journalism, media relations and event management, a career launched in 1970 when, at 19, he became the Georgia Straight’s gay columnist and Canada’s first “out” gay journalist. Titling the column “Q.Q. Writes … Page 69”, his pseudonym quickly became a nickname as Q.Q. began appearing under his own name on radio talk shows and at public events. By the summer of 1971 any thoughts of anonymity were dispelled when his image and name appeared with his column in a photo taken with a well-known gay clown in the PNE Parade!
Read more on Kevin Dale McKeown…
Leroy WanReading in Queerotica, August 8
Leroy Wan (Leader Lovebot of “Leroy & The Lovebots”) on himself.
My name is Leroy Ngaitopelpetalian Tung Wan. I was born on November 26th, the year Freddie Mercury died. I’m just a person who woke up one morning and realized what I loved doing most in the world, and it just seems like a shame to not do that for the rest of your life.
Writer Lydia Kwa Photo: Jason Sims
Lydia Kwa lives and works in Vancouver as a writer and psychologist. She has published one book of poetry, The Colours of Heroines (Toronto: Women’s Press, 1994) and three novels This Place Called Absence (Winnipeg: Turnstone, 2000); The Walking Boy (Toronto: Key Porter, 2005) and Pulse (Toronto: Key Porter, 2010). She has also dabbled in combining text with visual images and music in a collaborative project, Dying to Dress (http://vimeo.com/21083844).
Marco SorianoReading in Queerotica, August 8
Since obtaining his BFA from SFU in 1997 and his teaching degree in 1998, he has performed on stage, screen, radio and in the classroom.
Rachel Rose
Born in Vancouver, Canada, Rachel Rose holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship. She grew up on Hornby Island, in Vancouver’s Chinatown on Princess Street, in Anacortes, WA, and Seattle, and has also lived in Montreal and Maebashi, Japan. Her work has appeared in various journals in both countries, including The Malahat Review, Verse, Arc, Black Warrior Review, Poetry and The Best American Poetry.
Sigal SamuelReading in Queerotica, August 8
Sigal Samuel is a freelance writer currently based in Vancouver, Canada.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Event, Descant, Room, Scrivener Creative Review, Accenti Magazine, Thrust Magazine, and The Jerusalem Post, among other publications. Her personal journalism was featured at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in 2010. Sigal has written and produced five plays in Montreal and Vancouver. She is also a book and film reviewer for This Magazine, Schema Magazine, and PRISM international.
Writer Wayne Koestenbaum Photo credit Heike Steinweg
Wayne Koestenbaum has published five books of poetry, one novel, and six books of nonfiction. A graduate of Harvard and Princeton, he is a distinguished professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and also a visiting professor in the painting department of the Yale School of Art.
Read more on Wayne Koestenbaum…
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