The Writing Centre presents the On Edge Reading Series, which seeks to enrich literary and writing communities both inside and outside of the Emily Carr University community.
The series showcases the work of writers who are doing the freshest, most interesting, and relevant work, writers who are also artists, volunteers, literary award winners, social justice organizers, prison abolitionists, literary organizers, dancers, managing editors, filmmakers, creative writing instructors, and scholars. The On Edge programming serves to enrich literary and writing communities both inside and outside of ECUAD. The series is support by the Emily Carr Writing Centre with grateful acknowledgement to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Coast Salish First Nations whose traditional lands we are on.
All readings are FREE and open to the public. ASL interpretation is provided.
This series is organized and hosted by Mercedes Eng and currently assisted by Joanna.
Logo and posters by Sandy.
On Edge on social media:
Follow On Edge on Instagram to stay up to date.
For any other inquiries:
Please e-mail onedge@ecuad.ca
SPRING 2025:
Alicia Elliott
Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 5:30PM PT in the Aboriginal Gathering Place
Livestream link: Register for Zoom Room here
Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk writer and editor living in Brantford, Ontario. She has written for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Hazlitt, and many others. She’s had numerous essays nominated for National Magazine Awards, winning gold in 2017 and an honorable mention in 2020. Her short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30. Alicia was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Her first book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, was nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, and was a national bestseller in Canada. Her debut novel, And Then She Fell, was named a Globe and Mail and CBC Best Book of the Year in 2023, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, won the Indigenous Voices Award, the Amazon First Novel Award, the First Nations Communities READ Award, and is a national bestseller.
Photo: Alex Jacobs-Blum
Selina Boan
Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 5:30PM PT in the Aboriginal Gathering Place
Livestream link: Register for the Zoom Room here
Selina Boan is a white settler-nehiyaw (Cree) writer and educator living on the traditional, unceded territories of thexʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples.
Her debut poetry collection, Undoing Hours won the 2022 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry in English. Her work has been published widely, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She is a poetry editor for CV2.
Photo: Kayla MacInnis
Steacy Easton
Thursday, March 6, 2025 at 5:30PM PT in the Writing Centre (ECUAD Library)
Livestream link: Register from Zoom Room here
Steacy Easton is a writer and visual artist, originally from Edmonton, who has lived in Hamilton for more than eight years. They are the author of three books, one on Tammy Wynette (Why Tammy Wynette Matters, University of Texas Press), one on Dolly Parton (Dolly Parton’s White Limozeen for Bloomsbury), and a memoir (Daddy Lessons, for Coachhouse). Their music writing has been published by Atlantic Online, Bluegrass Situation, CBC, Spin, NPR, Vulture and others. They have visual work shown in Toronto, Montreal, New York, and Halifax.
Photo: Jesse Dirtfoot
Cody Caetano
Thursday, March 27, 2025 at 5:30PM PT in the Aboriginal Gathering Place
Livestream link: Register for Zoom Room here
Cody Caetano is a writer and literary agent. His debut memoir, Half-Bads in White Regalia, was a national bestseller, won two Indigenous Voices Awards, was longlisted for Canada Reads, the Toronto Book Award, the Leacock Medal for Humour, and the Edna Staebler Award, and named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mailand CBC Books in 2023. Cody represents award-winning and bestselling authors of literary fiction and nonfiction. He joined CookeMcDermid in 2022 after starting his career at Transatlantic Agency. He holds an MA in English in the field of Creative Writing and a BA in English and Professional Writing & Communication from the University of Toronto. Cody is Anishinaabe, Portuguese, and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation.
Photo: Kris Caetano
This season’s poster (click thumbnail to enlarge):
RECENT SEASONS OF THE ON EDGE READING SERIES (this section will continue to be updated with previous season history):
FALL 2024:
Jenny Heijun Wills
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 5:30PM PT
in the Aboriginal Gathering Place
Livestream link: Register for Zoom Room here
Jenny Heijun Wills (she/her) is the author of Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related: A Memoir (McClelland and Stewart, 2019). It won the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and the 2020 Manitoba Book Awards’ Best First Book Award. Everything and Nothing At All (Knopf Canada, 2024) is a collection of personal essays about race, gender, literature, adoption, and kinship. Wills was born in Korea and raised in Southern Ontario. She is professor of English at the University of Winnipeg.
For more information about Jenny: University of Winnipeg profile
Photo: courtesy of Jenny Heijun Wills
Saeed Teebi + Vance Wright
Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 5:30PM PT
in the Aboriginal Gathering Place
Livestream link: Register for the Zoom Room here
Saeed Teebi is a writer and lawyer based in Toronto. His debut collection of short stories, Her First Palestinian, was a finalist for several awards, including the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. The title story “Her First Palestinian” was shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. He is currently at work on two projects, a book of non-fiction entitled You Will Not Kill Our Imagination, and a debut novel. For more information about Saeed: Saeed’s X
Photo: courtesy of Saeed Teebi
Vance Wright is a reconnecting two-spirit member of the Tl’azt’en Nation, and was raised on the unceded territories of the Sinixt Nation in what is colonially known as Nelson BC. Currently residing in the occupied and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, they are a writer, and emerging artist & curator. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University, with a major in Critical and Cultural Practices and a minor is Curatorial Studies.
Cassandra Blanchard + andrea bennett
Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 5:30PM PT
in the Aboriginal Gathering Place
Livestream link: Register for the Zoom Room
Cassandra Blanchard was born in Whitehorse, Yukon and is a part of the Selkirk First Nation. She is the author of Fresh Pack of Smokes which won the 2020 Relit Award. She currently lives on Vancouver Island.
For more information about Cassandra: ROOM Magazine interview
andrea bennett is a National Magazine Award-winning writer, a senior editor at The Tyee, and the author of six books. the berry takes the shape of the bloom (Talonbooks) was one of CBC’s picks for 30 Canadian books to read in Winter 2024. Points of Interest, co-edited with David Beers, has spent fifteen weeks on the BC Bestseller list. Their most recent book of essays, Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence, just came out with ECW Press.
For more information about andrea: Official Website
Photos: courtesy of Cassandra Blanchard + andrea bennett
Jane Shi
Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 5:30PM PT
in the Aboriginal Gathering Place
Livestream link: Register for the Zoom Room here
Jane Shi lives on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəýəm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Her writing has appeared in the Disability Visibility ProjectBlog, Briarpatch Magazine, The Offing, CV2 Magazine, ROOM Magazine, The Ex-Puritan, Canthius, and Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press), among others. She is the winner of The Capilano Review’s 2022 In(ter)ventions in the Archive Contest and author of the chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022). echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024) is her debut poetry collection. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.
For more information about Jane: Official Website
Jane’s photo: Joy Gyamfi
*UPDATE NOV 12* Due to unforeseen circumstances, ANNHARTE will no longer be able to attend as previously advertised.
This season’s poster (click thumbnail to enlarge):
SPRING 2024
Adèle Barclay
Tuesday, January 30 at 6:30 pm PT *NEW DATE*
HYBRID session: in-person location is the Writing Centre OR register for online attendance through Zoom
Adèle Barclay (she/they) poems, stories, and essays have appeared in The Pinch, The Heavy Feather Review, The Malahat, glitterMOB, PRISM, Cosmonauts Avenue and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2016 Lit POP Award for Poetry, The Walrus’ 2016 Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry and The Fiddlehead’s 2022 Fiction Prize. Their debut poetry collection, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You won the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection, Renaissance Normcore was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the ReLit Award and placed third for the 2020 Fred Cogswell Award. They teach literature and writing at Capilano University. She is at work on a memoir called Black Cherry and a fiction project. Visit Adèle’s website here.
Photo: courtesy Adèle
El Jones
Tuesday, February 27 at 5:30 pm PT **NEW DATE+ TIME**
ONLINE session: Zoom Registration
El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She teaches at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she was named the 15th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies in 2017. She was Halifax’s Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She is the author of Live from the Afrikan Resistance!, a collection of poems about resisting white colonialism. Her work focuses on social justice issues, such as feminism, prison abolition, anti-racism and decolonization. Since 2016, she has co-hosted a radio show called Black Power Hour, on CKDU-FM where listeners from prisons call in to rap and read their poetry, providing a voice to people who rarely get a wide audience. She contributed to the 2020 anthology, Sick of the System: Why COVID-19 Recovery Must Be Revolutionary. Her latest book Abolitionist Intimacies examines the movement to abolish prisons through the Black feminist principles of care and collectivity. Visit El’s Twitter account.
Nisha Patel
Tuesday, March 5 at 6:30 pm PT
ONLINE session: Zoom Registration
Nisha Patel is an award-winning disabled queer spoken word author & artist. She was the City of Edmonton’s 8th Poet Laureate, and is a Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Champion. Her debut poetry collection, COCONUT (NeWest Press) was a finalist for the ABPA Regional Book of the Year. She is also a dedicated teacher, mentor, and public speaker. Her latest works include her disability chapbook, NOT A DISORDER (Gap Riot Press) as well as her co-authored book of erasure and multimedia photos How To Get a Thigh Gap with Bree Taylor (Collusion Books). Her next poetry collection, a fate worse than death, will be out with Arsenal Pulp Press in spring 2024. She is working on her first graphic novel focusing on lived experiences of desire and disability, and is querying her disability-focused children’s books. Visit Nisha’s website here.
Daniel Zomparelli
Tuesday, March 26 at 6:30 pm PT
HYBRID session: in-person in the Writing Centre OR register for online attendance through Zoom
Daniel Zomparelli is the author of Davie Street Translations, and Rom Com co-written with Dina Del Bucchia. His collection Everything Is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and won the ReLit Short Fiction Award. He co-edited Queer Little Nightmares with David Ly. His latest book of poetry Jump Scare will be published spring of 2024. Visit Daniel’s website here.
Photo: Victoria Takes Photos
This season’s poster (click thumbnail to enlarge):
FALL 2023
FEATURING:
Molly Cross-Blanchard
Wednesday, Sept 27 at 6:30 pm PT
HYBRID session: attend in-person in the Artist Book Room (ECU Library) OR by Zoom
Molly Cross-Blanchare is a white and Métis writer, editor, and educator born on Treaty 3 (Fort Frances, ON), raised on Treaty 6 (Prince Albert, SK), and currently living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, colonially known as Vancouver. She is the former poetry editor of PRISM international, the former publisher of Room, and currently teaches creative writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. In service to the writing community, Molly serves as the Indigenous Advocate for the National Council of TWUC, sits on the Board of Directors at Asparagus Magazine, and consults on the Equity Advisory Committee at the BC Arts Council. Her debut collection of poetry is Exhibitionist (Coach House 2021).
Jody Chan
Tuesday, Oct 17 at 6:30 pm PT
ONLINE session: Zoom registration
Jody Chan is a writer, drummer, community organizer, and care worker based in Toronto/Tkaronto. They are the author of sick (Black Lawrence Press), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Pat Lowther Memorial Awards, and winner of the 2018 St. Lawrence Book Award and 2021 Trillium Award for Poetry. Jody is also a performing and teaching member with RAW Taiko Drummers, and they can be found online at www.jodychan.com.
Steffi Tad-y
Tuesday, Nov 7 at 6:30 pm PT
ONLINE session: Zoom Registration
Born and raised in Manila, Steffi Tad-y is a poet & writer based in the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, & Tsleil-Waututh Nations, also known as Vancouver, British Columbia. Her chapbook of poems Merienda published by Rahila’s Ghost Press was nominated for the 2021 bpNichol Chapbook Award. In 2022, she published her debut book of poetry From the Shoreline with Gordon Hill Press. Steffi’s poems often reflect on kinship, diasporic geographies, & formations of the mind.
Mackenzie Ground
Tuesday, Nov 28 at 6:30 pm PT
HYBRID session: attend in-person in the Artist Book Room (ECU Library) OR by Zoom
Mackenzie Ground is a nehiyawiskwew from Enoch maskekosihk Cree Nation and Edmonton amiskwacîwâskahikan, Alberta. She is a PhD student at Simon Fraser University in the Department of English. She is a writer and a language learner of nehiyawewin (the Plains Cree language), and her work considers the relationships of identity and place, to the land and to cities, and to the more-than-human beings who live there. Her writing has appeared in The Capilano Review, The Denver Quarterly, and C Magazine among others. She is thankful for the support of her friends.
This season’s poster (click thumbnail to enlarge):
SPRING 2023
FEATURING:
Manahil Bandukwala
Tuesday, January 24th, 2023 at 6:30 pm PT
Online event: Zoom registration
Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist originally from Pakistan and now settled in Canada. She works as Coordinating Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, and is Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of Ottawa-based collaborative writing group VII. Her debut poetry collection is MONUMENT (Brick Books). See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.
Adam Pottle
Monday, February 6th, at 6:30 pm PT
Online event: Zoom registration
Adam Pottle is a Deaf author whose writing spans multiple genres. His works include the novella The Bus, the memoir Voice, and the groundbreaking Deaf musical The Black Drum. His work has won and been nominated for numerous awards, including Saskatchewan Book Awards, the ReLit Award, and the National Magazine Award. In the 2021-22 academic year, he served Sheridan College as writer in residence, and in 2022 he was a Warner Bros. Discovery Access screenwriting fellow. His prairie gothic horror novel Apparitions will appear in Fall 2023, and his children’s story Butterfly on the Wind will be released in Spring 2024. He lives in Saskatoon, where he teaches English and creative writing.
Photo Credit: Tenille Campbell of Sweetmoon Photography
Alessandra Naccarato
Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at 6:30 pm PT
Online event: Zoom registration
Alessandra Naccarato is the author of Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene (Essays) and Re-Origin of Species (Poems). Born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto), her poetry and essays explore intersections of disability and ecological change, and have appeared widely in publications such as The New Quarterly, Room Magazine, and Event. She is the recipient of numerous recognitions, including the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award and the CBC Poetry Prize, and holds graduate degrees in both creative writing and community economic development, supporting two decades of work in grassroots social change, community arts, and the prevention of gender-based violence. Her debut poetry collection, Re-Origin of Species, was awarded the AICW Bressani Literary Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and named a Best Book of 2019 by CBC Books.
Photo credit: Simon Beckmann of JOYA
Joshua Whitehead
Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 6:30 pm PT
Online event: Zoom registration
Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-nêhiyaw, Two-Spirit member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer, Jonny Appleseed, and Making Love with the Land. He is also the editor of Love after the End: an Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction and has a chapbook, Indigiqueerness: a Conversation on Storytelling to be published in 2023 with AU Press alongside Angie Abdou. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary where he is housed in the departments of English and International Indigenous Studies.
Photo Credit: Tenille K Campbell of Sweetmoon Photography
This season’s poster (click thumbnail to enlarge):
FALL 2022
bailey macabre + Whess Harman
October 11th, 2022 at 6:30 pm
bailey macabre is an agender Cree, Métis and Ukrainian artist and writer who is passionate about bright colours, Indigenous sovereignty, and identity; these themes are often at play within their works. bailey has experience working in a variety of mediums and dabbles in everything from sculpture and beadwork, illustration, zines and comic arts, to painting and sewing. they currently reside on the territory of the Snuneymuxw people.
Whess Harman is Carrier Wit’at, a nation amalgamated by the federal government under the Lake Babine Nation. They graduated from the Emily Carr University BFA program in 2014 and are currently living and working on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh as the curator at grunt gallery.
Their multidisciplinary practice includes beading, illustration, text, poetry and curation. As a mixed-race, trans artist they work to find their way through a tasty plethora of a reasonably managed attention deficit disorder, colonial bullshit and queer melancholy. To the best of their patience, they do this with humour and a carefully mediated cynicism that the galleries go hog wild for.
Twitter: @ndn_bebop
Rebecca Salazar
November 1st, 2022 at 6:30 pm
Rebecca Salazar (she/they) is a writer, editor, and community organizer living on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik. Salazar is the author of two chapbooks, and her first full-length collection sulphurtongue (McClelland & Stewart), an urgent, powerful examination of place and the ways in which all kinds of identities exist and collide, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Award for Poetry, longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Menmorial Award, and shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award.
David Ly
November 8th, 2022 at 6:30 pm
David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (2020), which was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Poetry Award, and Dream of Me as Water (2022), both published under the Anstruther Books imprint at Palimpsest Press. He is also co-editor (with Daniel Zomparelli) of Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). David’s poems have appeared in publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, PRISM International, and The Puritan, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. David is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine.
This season’s poster (click thumbnail to enlarge):
FALL 2021
SEPT 21, 2021 with Dallas Hunt
OCT 5, 2021 with Leah Horlick
OCT 26, 2021 with Chantal Gibson
NOV 16, 2021 with Jas Morgan
Organized and hosted by Mercedes Eng and Vance W.
This season’s poster (click to enlarge):
Spring 2021
JAN 18 – Cecily Nicholson, Hari Alluri + Junie Désil
FEB 9 – Amber Dawn + Justin Ducharme
MAR 2 – Brandi Bird, Emily Riddle + Jessica Johns
MAR 18 – jaye simpson
MAR 25 – Billy-Ray Belcourt
Curated and hosted by Mercedes Eng, and co-hosted by Vance W.
This season’s poster (click to enlarge):
