You are invited to the 30th session of The Tartan Turban Secret Readings curated by Terese Mason Pierre. Featuring Avi Silver, Vivian Li, Yohani Mendis and Leslie Joy Ahenda.

Writers will be participating via Google Meet. Attendees will be able to join the event by clicking here on the day of the reading during the hours scheduled.

Curator

Terese Mason Pierre is an award-nominated writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, filling Station, Quill & Quire, Uncanny Magazine, and elsewhere online and in print. She is a co-editor-in-chief of Augur Magazine and the author of chapbooks Surface Area (Anstruther Press, 2019) and Manifest (Gap Riot Press, 2020). Follow her on Twitter @teresempierre.

Featured writers

Avi Silver is a spec fic author (Two Dark Moons, 2019; Three Seeking Stars, 2021), editor (Augur Magazine), and poet. Find their short fiction in Common Bonds: An Aromantic Speculative Anthology, and their poetry in or forthcoming in Strange Horizons and Uncanny Magazine. In 2018, they co-founded The Shale Project, an award-winning indie arts collective, and have not stopped worldbuilding since. For lizard pictures, follow them on Twitter @thescreambean. Books: TWO DARK MOONS and THREE SEEKING STARS (preorder)

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Vivian Li is a writer, editor, and musician who enjoys acting, the visual arts, as well as dance. An MFA candidate at UBC, she has been published in Uncanny Magazine, ellipsis... literature & art, Plenitude Magazine, and elsewhere. She was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2020 and received Honorable Mentions from Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize 2019. She is currently an Editor at Augur and Prose Editor at PRISM international and can be reached on Twitter @eliktherain.

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Yohani Mendis is a Toronto-based emerging writer. Her work was shortlisted as a Notable Essay in the 2020 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest; placed second in the 2021 Toronto International Festival of Authors/Fan Expo Flash Fiction Contest; and her first published poem is forthcoming this fall in Best Canadian Poetry 2021. Her writing has appeared in several places including The New Quarterly, the Watch Your Head anthology, and This Magazine. She works at Brick, A Literary Journal, and is an incoming student in the Guelph MFA Program. She is working on her first novel.

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Leslie Joy Ahenda is an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph and the poetry editor for Augur Magazine. She is a finalist for the Alberta Magazine Publishers’ Award for poetry. Her poems have appeared in filling Station, Plenitude Magazine, Poetry is Dead, and more. Her debut chapbook, THRENODY FOR A DROWNED GIRL (2021) is available from Moon Jelly House. Follow her on Twitter: @lesliejoyahenda.

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For updated information and author headshots, follow our Facebook group and our Facebook event page.  

Want to receive updates on the next reading? Follow our FB group for updates on the next session and the link to the Eventbrite registration page for each reading. (we do ask that you register if you plan to attend). You can also sign up for our email list here.

Open mic

Anyone attending is welcome to read or perform (if you are a musician) in our open mic sessions.

If you are a writer or musician who would like to perform in the open mic session, we ask that you listen in to at least one session to get the flavour of the evening and join in on your next visit.

To participate in TTSR #30, please contact series curators Gavin or Mayank or TTSR30 curator Terese Mason Pierre. This allows them to line up readers and manage the evening in a way that respects each writer's work.

The ambience at our readings is intimate, extremely informal and very supportive. Open mic readers are given 4 minutes in total, including a brief introduction to themselves and their work. There are detailed open mic guidelines posted in our FB group.

Open mic readers who have published works they would like to offer for sale are free to mention it on finishing their readings.

Notes on attending a virtual reading

Please join the reading with your microphone muted and your camera turned off. (If you forget, you will be muted by a moderator.) We want to make sure all the bandwidth is being used by only those presenting and that there is no background noise as it causes noise interference for others attending/listening. If you experience technical difficulties and choose to leave the reading because of this, we understand and apologize in advance. Please be patient with us as we are doing our best to make it a pleasant experience for all.

Logging on: Please sign in no later than 7:00 pm.

Accessibility/Closed Captioning: Our Google Meet access allows for closed captioning for those who need it. Here’s how: at the bottom of the Google Meet window, click Turn on Captions. You might have to first click the three vertical dots at the bottom right corner.

Tip: If the captions are covered by your call button controls, click anywhere else inside the Meet window to dismiss them and then click turn on captions.

Technical tips: For the best experience sign in on your computer and not on your phone. Find the spot in your home where the wifi connection is usually at its strongest. Use headphones for the best audio. If you are not one of our featured writers or open mic readers, please turn off your mic and camera when you join. We will invite you to turn on your camera in the break and at the end of the evening.

To make sure you see the speaker in your main view window, click the three vertical dots at the bottom right corner first, choose change layout and then choose "spotlight” or “sidebar” view. Google will automatically display the person speaking in the main window.

This option is only available on your computer and not via phone (sorry). Please do not use the text chat while a reading is in progress except to notify us if you are experiencing technical difficulties (if it’s an issue we can fix at our end, we will do our best to do so.). Adding to the chat mid-reading, generates audio notifications that may be distracting to our readers.

However, please do use the text chat to compliment the writers after they finish their reading.

About The Tartan Turban Secret Readings 

In pre-COVID times, Barrett and Welsh hosted a (not so) “secret" reading series on its rather lovely open-air office rooftop deck or, in its large open concept studio space in Toronto. Since COVID, we have transformed our readings into an online/virtual reading format that accepts readers from across the country and can be attended from anywhere in the world.

The Tartan Turban Secret Readings feature poetry, drama and prose readings that celebrate Canadian multicultural writing created by multicultural, minority and BIPoC writers. The idea is to provide a platform for BIPoC writers who have very few such platforms. At the same time, all writers who want to celebrate Canada’s multiculturalism, literary diversity and indigenous heritage, and have talent to share, are welcomed. 

Curators change from reading to reading. If you would like to read or curate, contact Gavin Barrett or Mayank Bhatt, who are co-curators for the series. 

The sessions are often photographed, filmed or streamed on FB/YouTube live and recordings will eventually be posted on YouTube and the series website. Please be aware that by attending this event, you agree to be photographed and/or filmed and give permission to use your likeness in promotional and/or marketing materials.

If you are in the audience and do not want to be seen or heard in the recording, simply keep your microphone and camera turned off.

About Barrett and Welsh

Barrett and Welsh is a minority-led, creativity-powered, change-making ad agency that puts ideas first to make ideas last. A certified B Corporation, it has specialty practices in inclusion communications (mainly multicultural/visible minority and persons with disabilities) and sustainable urban development (mostly transit and economic development).

About the series co-curators

Mayank Bhatt and Gavin Barrett curate the Tartan Turban Secret Readings.

Mayank Bhatt's first novel Belief was published in 2016 by MG Vassanji’s Mawenzi House press. The novel explores youth radicalization and alienation, and the impact of terrorism on a family in the context of the failure of immigration and settlement framework in Canada. Mayank Bhatt immigrated to Toronto in 2008 from Mumbai (Bombay), where he worked as a journalist. His short stories have been published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II. In Canada, he has worked as a security guard, as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce and as an organizer for the Festive of South Asian Literature and Art. He lives in Toronto with his family.

Gavin Barrett  is a poet and creative entrepreneur, and the author of Understan, a new collection of poems published by Mawenzi House in June 2020 that is a CBC Books recommendation. He was born in Bombay and lived in Hong Kong for several years before immigrating to Canada. Gavin’s poetry has been published in Reasons for Belonging (Viking Penguin India), an anthology of 14 Indian poets; the Pen India journal; The Folio; The Independent (Bombay); The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad; and Poiesis, the Bombay Poetry Circle journal. He was a contributing writer to This|ability, a book on Canada’s art brut and outsider artists. He is the host and the founder and series co-curator (with Mayank Bhatt) of the Tartan Turban Secret Readings, a series promoting BIPoC writers. He is co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of idea consultancy and brand advertising agency Barrett and Welsh. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Authors Association (Toronto), PEN Canada and The League of Canadian Poets. You can read more about Gavin in the organizer note below.