Join us for our November 2023 Reading at Dog-Eared Cafe!
We are excited to welcome writers Heather Beamish, Fareh Malik, Laila Malik, Mariam Pirbhai, and Richard Sitoski to present their original work with us in Paris, Ontario!
BOOKS will be available for purchase from the presenters.
FOOD & DRINKS will be available for purchase from the venue.
FREE PUBLIC PARKING is available throughout Downtown Paris.
This event is made possible with funding support from both the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) and the Government of Ontario.
HEATHER BEAMISH (she/her) is a tea-drinking, female-loving, ex-evangelical pastor turned author, spoken word artist, and speaker. She is committed to, and energized by, resourcing communities with tools for reimagining, and reconciling differences through art and storytelling. Heather’s work is birthed out of the rich and intersectional lens of her Queer, Black, Indigenous and female identities. As the co-founder of Voices Canada and an engaged community organizer in Tkaronto, Heather is committed to using her platform, talent and energy to build a world where systemic change is fueled by our individual and collective liberation.
FAREH MALIK is a BIPOC artist from Hamilton, Ontario, as well as a seasoned spoken word poet and established author. Fareh was named the 2022 RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award winner. He was also the winner of Hamilton Art’s Shirley Elford Prize, The 2022 October Project Poetry Award, and MH Canada's 2020 Poetry Contest. Fareh's debut book Streams That Lead Somewhere was published in 2022 with Mawenzi House Publishers. Fareh was named a finalist for the 2021 Best of the Net anthology, and was honoured with the 2021 Garden Project grant to explore interdisciplinary work. His individual works have been published by literary presses all around the world. Fareh’s work has been described as critical, yet sanguine; poetry that often explores the intersection of racialization and mental illness, while maintaining a silver lining on its horizon. He loves to tell the story of his struggle, and of his community around him, in the hope that others can find inspiration and companionship in it. Fareh is currently a poet and author working on his second collection.
LAILA MALIK is a desisporic writer in Adobigok, traditional land of the Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Her writing has been published in various Canadian and international literary magazines, and her essays have been longlisted in five creative non-fiction contests and nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her debut collection archipelago (book*hug press, spring 2023) was included in CBC's Spring 2023 Poetry Collections to Watch For.
MARIAM PIRBHAI is an academic and creative writer. She is the author of a newly released book of creative nonfiction titled Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging (Wolsak & Wynn, 2023), a debut novel titled Isolated Incident (Mawenzi 2022) and a short story collection titled Outside People and Other Stories (Inanna 2017), winner of the 2018 International Independent Publishers’ and American BookFest awards. She is Full Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she specializes in postcolonial literatures, diaspora studies and creative writing. She is the author and editor of book-length studies on the global South Asian diaspora and its literatures, including Mythologies of Migration, Vocabularies of Indenture: Novels of the South Asian Diaspora in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific (University of Toronto Press, 2009). She has served as the President of the Canadian Association for Postcolonial Studies (formerly known as CACLALS, the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), and is deeply committed to decolonizing the way we think about and teach literature and creative writing. She was born in Pakistan and lives in Waterloo, ON.
RICHARD SITOSKI is a songwriter, performance poet, and the 2019-2023 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, Ontario. He is also the Artistic Director of the Words Aloud festival. He regularly collaborates with Grey Bruce Pride, SHEATRE and the M'Wikwedong Indigenous Friendship Centre. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in many journals, including The Fiddlehead, Arc, CAROUSEL, Prairie Fire, QWERTY, The Windsor Review, The Maynard, Barren Magazine, Bywords.ca, in the League of Canadian Poets' Poetry Pause, and as part of Brick Books' Brickyard spoken word video series. In 2018 he was a finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. He is a 2021 Best of the Net nominee for his poem, "The Limping Fox".