The Toronto Women's Bookstore presents:
Connecting Communities: Desh & Diaspora
Wednesday July 11th
7pm - 10pm
Savannagh Room, 294 College St.
$6 - $12 sliding scale
partially wheelchair accessible
Desh & Diaspora is part of a series called 'Connecting Communities', where we attempt to bring together different communities to discuss and highlight artists, activists and community workers. The night will begin with readings by different authors and conclude with a panel discussion where we will discuss the different experiences of being a South-Asian artist in Canada and what it means to be part of the South-Asian Diaspora.
The night will be hosted by Anju Gogia of PEN Canada and there will be readings and/or discussions with author teenah edan , playwright/author, Nila Gupta, stand-up comedian, Sabrina Jalees, Bengali poet Ferdos Nahar, visual artist Frances Ferdinands, radical spokenword artists, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Shameless.
About the artists:
Anjula Gogia is the former manager of the Toronto Women's Bookstore. She has been active in Toronto's activist and cultural scene for years. She is a former board member and volunteer of Desh Pardesh. She is also a member of the Friday Night Productions collective, which directed and produced "Rewriting the Script: A love letter to our families" a video geared to queer South Asians and their families. She is currently on the board of directors of the Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble, and in her day job organizes events for PEN Canada.
teenah edan is a woman of South Asian-Caribbean descent with a passion for breaking silence. She holds a master's degree in media studies and has performed her poetry in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and San Francisco. Her work was published in TOK Book 1: Writing the New Toronto (Zephyr) and will appear in the upcoming Erotique Caribbean: Anthology of Caribbean Erotica (Peepal Tree Press).
Nila Gupta is a Toronto based writer, playwright, and filmmaker. She has been awarded numerous art council awards and grants and has sat on a number of arts juries. In 2004 she won the K.M. Hunter Award for Literature. Her first book, The Sherpa and Other Fictions, will be published by Sumach Press in the Spring of 2008. She is currently completing her MFA degree in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph.
Shameless has a penchant for music that sends messages of unity and hope, and her sounds focuses on personal, social and spiritual upliftment. Her feisty, complex lyrics are infused with a call for sexy, loving resistance. Shameless’s writing has been published in the anthology Desilicious: Sexy, Subversive, South Asian, in NOW magazine, and in the feminist quarterly Fireweed. She’s MC’d hoppin’ fun-raisers, appeared in the Mayworks Festival of Working People in the Arts, and stopped the show at a number of other wicked venues. Shameless writes effusively and seeks rad open-mikes and other events where she can show off her styles, and has intentions of recording her sounds in the near future. Keep your eyes and ears open for more of Shameless’ life-lovin’, waist-windin’, system-shiftin’ sounds!
Sabrina Jalees was the result of a carefully crafted plan for world domination brewed in 8005 B.C. by the SwissPaki tribe. Born in the butt-crack middle of the 1980's, she has taken the comedy world by storm and is working on creating at least a heavy wind on the rest of the planet. Since she set foot on the Yuk Yuk's stage for the first time at 16, she has been the youngest stand-up ever added to their professional roster. She later broke Mike Meyer's record for being the youngest artist hired by Second City. She has performed at the Just For Laughs Festival, recorded a Comedy NOW special for CTV and has toured across North America. The girl's had leading roles in CBC's Smart Ask and Toronto One's, The Toronto Show and, now that both show's got pulled, is proud to be studying Radio and Television at Ryerson University .
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan spoken word artist, writer and cultural worker. The author of Consensual Genocide and co-founder of the Asian Arts Freedom School, Browngirlworld and Mangos With Chili, she's also a feminist anthology queen, a progressive Sri Lankan activist with the Sri Lankan Women's Action Network and a touring diva.
Born in Sri Lanka, Frances Ferdinands is a Toronto-based Canadian artist. Ms. Ferdinands has exhibited her paintings for over two decades in group and solo exhibitions in such diverse places as Paris, Honolulu, Bogota, the Continental U.S.A. and across Canada. She is the recipient of many Grants from the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council, and her work has been purchased for inclusion in corporate, public, and private collections.
Since two decades Ferdous Nahar has been walking on a relentless journey into the realm of Bangla poetry. In this journey, every bit of her experience - dust and dreams, lives and stills, abstracts and realism - molds and adorns her creation. Her commitment, her indulgence and her pronounced dwelling in Bangla literature have placed her in the forefront of the galaxy of Bengali poets of 21st century. When the system of Bangladesh refused to accept her free thinking ideologies, she was set adrift in this world as a true bohemian. Toronto offered her a home, a pen and new elements of life. She is a poet in exile. Her publications; 6 poetry books and a book with her essays have undeniably added a new dimension in Bangla literature. She is a master degree holder in literature from the Dhaka University of Bangladesh.
This event has been Co-sponsored by:
SAVAC South-Asian Visual Arts Collective
ASAAP Alliance for South Asian Aids Prevention
CASSA Council of Agencies Serving South-Asians
SALCO (South-Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario)
Brownstargirl Productions
SAWC (South-Asian Women’s Centre)
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Toronto Women’s Bookstore, 73 Harbord Street Toronto, ON, M5S 1G4
Ph: 416.922.8744,
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