This week we talk with J David Carpenter, a poet and novelist who lives in Prince Edward County. He grew up in Toronto and attended York University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and Queen’s University, for his B. Ed. He first worked as a journalist for Daily Racing Form and as a freelance writer, then taught high school English for 25 years. David began his writing career as a poet, publishing four books of poetry between 1976 and 1994. He then turned to crime fiction during the 1990s and has published six novels: The Devil in Me (McClelland &Stewart, 2001) This first novel appeared on the Globe and Mail’s bestseller list and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award; his subsequent novels have also received critical acclaim, His most recent books of poetry are All Us Cats on Stage (Cressy Lakeside Books, 2021) and A Road through the Corn: Prince Edward County Poems, 1982-2022 (Cressy Lakeside Books, 2022). He has just completed an MS of list poems and is currently working on a new project which may become a novel. He is also locally known for writing and performing jazz poetry with musical accompaniment.
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Marie-Lynn Hammond
This week we offer an encore presentation of a programme we made last year with Marie-Lynn Hammond. Alongside a music career as a singer-songwriter and co-founder of the seminal Canadian folk group Stringband, Marie-Lynn Hammond has, for the past 40 years, written magazine and newspaper articles; essays; stage plays, all professionally produced; one feature film (co-written); a handful of short stories; and poetry. More recently she’s co-written, with writer Michael Kaufman, a young adult novel, Moon Storm Rising, under the pen name Kayden Quinn.
Mia Burrus
This week we offer an encore performance of a show we made with Mia Burrus in February 2024 Mia is a writer and artist who lives in a restored one-room schoolhouse in the country north of Cobourg. Also known by her given name of Anne-Marie, she still provides occasional accounting support to charities in the GTA. But her passion is using words, images and found objects to explore the boundaries and spaces between what is spoken and silent, solid and ephemeral, known and unknowable, mindful and mindless, crafting poems, and multi-dimensional, multimedia artworks. Her poetry collection, What I Don’t Know, published in 2021, is a selection from years of careful observation and carefree wonder and is available through her website.www.miaburrus.com Two of her altered book artworks were included in the 2022 Juried Show at the Colborne Art Gallery, and a new work was part of the Juried Show at the Art Gallery of Northumberland in 2024.
Kim Fahner
This Sunday our guest is Kim Fahner. Kim lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest book, a novel, is The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46 Publishing) and her next book of poetry, The Pollination Field, will be published by Turnstone Press in 2025. Kim was a finalist for the 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and she recently won first place in The Ampersand Review’s 2024 Essay Contest for her essay, “What You Carry.” Kim is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She read for The Third Thursday Reading series in Cobourg recently and gave a workshop.
Allan Briesmaster
Our guest this week is Allan Briesmaster. He is a poet, freelance editor and publisher who’s been active on the Toronto-area literary scene for many years. He has been a workshop leader and reading series organizer and was a partner in Quattro Books in 2006-2017. He currently operates his own small, independent press, Aeolus House, specializing in custom-designed, limited-edition books of poetry.
The most recent of Allan’s nine poetry collections are The Long Bond: Selected and New Poems, from Guernica Editions in 2019, and Windfor, from Ekstasis Editions in 2021. His new book Later Findings has just been released. He has read his poetry, given talks, been on panels, and hosted events at venues from Victoria to St. John’s. He is a Life Member of The League of Canadian Poets and of The Ontario Poetry Society.
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