A night of literary readings
Wed Jul 6 | 7pm
Sun Wah Centre, 2nd Floor – 268 Keefer St.
Berend McKenzie, Curator
This year our artists will present works that inspire, provoke, and titilate while exploring the theme, the Masc & Femme We Wear: what are the costs of masking or revealing one’s inner self under the glaring stage lights of colonialist supremacy? How do the expectations of a salacious supremacist gaze fit, chafe, bind, haunt or even unravel the BIPOC queer body and spirit? How is the BIPOC queer body eroticized and fetishized?
Berend McKenzie (he/she/they interchangeably) is an award-winning playwright, actor, producer, screenwriter, and published author living on Treaty 6 land otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta. Berend is best known for his ground-breaking, Jessie Richardson Award nominated one-person show NGGRFG. He has worked with Oscar-winning actresses Halle Berry and Angelina Jolie. Berend is currently writing his first auto-fiction novel, Adopted. In October 2021, Berend’s short story Hockey Night in Canada was published in the anthology Between Certain Death and A Possible Future: Queer Writing in Growing up with the AIDS Crisis (Arsenal Pulp Press) and has just completed writing their first TV pilot under option with Warner Media.
