You are invited to the 31st session of The Tartan Turban Secret Readings curated by Veena Gokhale. Featuring Bonita Lawrence, Amatoritsero Ede, Nilambri Ghai, Carolyn Marie Souaid and Andreas Kessaris.

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

Veena Gokhale, an immigrant shapeshifter, started her career as a journalist in Bombay. This “tough, tantalizing” city inspired Bombay Wali and other stories (Guernica Editions, 2013). She came to Canada on a journalism fellowship and returned to do a Master's. After immigrating, she worked for non-profits. Her novel Land for Fatimah (Guernica, 2018) was inspired by a two-year stint in Tanzania. She has published in anthologies and literary magazines, read widely from her work and received writing grants. She continues to do freelance journalism. Veena will publish, The Artichoke, Sensuous Stories, in December 2021, and is working on Annapurna’s Bounty, recasting food-related legends into contemporary fiction. She gives Indian, vegetarian, cooking classes online. Veena lives in Montreal and you can follow her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/veenastories/

_____________________________________________________________________

Featured writers

Dr. Bonita Lawrence is a Professor in the Humanities Department at York University where she is a founding member of the Indigenous Studies program where she teaches. Dr. Lawrence has authored two academic books: Fractured Homeland: Federal Recognition and Algonquin Identity in Ontario and “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed-Race Urban Native People and Indigenous Nationhood as well as co-authoring, with Kim Anderson, a collection of essays entitled Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival, in addition to a number of academic articles. N’in D’la Owey Innklan: Mi’kmaq Sojourns in England (Austin Macauley, 2020) is her first novel. It is a historical novel, spanning five centuries of Mi’kmaw history and its connections to England, told in a series of vignettes.

_______________________

Amatoritsero Ede is an internationally award-winning poet born in Nigeria. He has three poetry collections, A Writer’s Pains & Caribbean Blues (1998), Globetrotter & Hitler’s Children (2009) and recently, Teardrops on the Weser (2021). His debut won the prestigious All Africa Okigbo Prize for Literature in 1998, the second was nominated for the Nigerian Literature Prize in 2013. In 2004, he won second prize in the first May Ayim Award: International Black German Literary Prize. He appears in 14 poetry anthologies locally and internationally. He is also a literary scholar and Assistant Professor of English at Mount Allison University, New Brunswick. He is the Publisher and Managing Editor of the Maple Tree Literary Supplement, MTLS.

_______________________

Nilambri Ghai was born in India and has a master’s degree in English Literature with over 30 years’ experience as an educator, writer, and policy analyst. Her career in Canada includes work in the public and not-for-profit sectors in the fields of adult literacy and skills development. Nilambri is a regular contributor, copyeditor, co-editor, and founding member of Montréal Serai www.montrealserai.com one of the oldest webzines in Canada. She recently published From Johanne to Janaki: Bringing Vikings to Varanasi about the life of a Danish woman, her grandmother, who left Copenhagen for India in 1895. Parallels are drawn between her journey to the east with Nilambri’s journey to the west.

_______________________

Carolyn Marie Souaid is the Montreal-based author of eight poetry collections and a novel, Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik, Silver Medalist for Best Regional Fiction (Independent Publisher Book Awards, 2018). She has performed at festivals and literary events in Canada and abroad, and her work has been shortlisted for numerous poetry awards, including the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Blood is Blood, co-written and performed with Endre Farkas, garnered a top prize at the 2012 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Her poems and stories have appeared in The Malahat Review, the Literary Review of Canada and elsewhere, and have been featured on CBC-Radio. In her youth, she lived and taught in Arctic Quebec.

_______________________

Andreas Kessaris grew up in Montreal’s Park Extension district, the son of Greek immigrants, and currently lives in the Town of Mont-Royal, Quebec. He graduated from Concordia University with a BA in Communications and English. He has done various jobs, and for the last 14 years, he worked as Events Coordinator for Librairie Paragraphe. His column, Read On! with Andreas Kessaris was a popular feature in the former community paper The Local Seeker (Herald). His writing has appeared on Suite101.com, The Write Place, and on Curtainsup.tv. The Butcher of Park Ex & Other Semi-Truthful Tales is his first book. In September 2014 he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a theme he continues to explore through his writing.

_______________________

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 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 #31, please contact series curators Gavin or Mayank or TTSR31 curator Veena Gokhale. 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 IBPoC 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 Joao Roque Literary Journal; 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 IBPoC 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.