Brockton Writers Series presents readings by:

Kasia Jaronczyk

Karen Smythe

J.M. Frey

Adriana Chartrand

Our event will be hosted in person at the Glad Day Bookshop, located at 499 Church St., Toronto. We will also live stream the event on the Brockton Writers Series YouTube channel! The event starts at 6:30 p.m.

The reading is PWYC and features a Q&A with the writers afterward. Books are available for sale.

 If you’d like to donate, please do so here.

Many thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for their support.

GUEST SPEAKER

Shyan Mirhassani Vahed

QT Literary Magazine: Finding your niche in independent publishing

Shyan Mirhassani Vahed is the Project Coordinator for QT. She has helped guide the organization through transformational change and is a connector, keeping QT grounded in the tradition of zine making as queer community organizing. With a BA in Urban and Regional Planning and a graduate certificate in International Development, Shyan has worked with 2SLGBTQIA+ homeless youth, and women experiencing gender based violence. She is passionate about the arts as a medium to highlight inequalities and other social justice issues that the queer and trans community faces today.

READERS

Kasia Jaronczyk is a Polish-Canadian writer, artist and microbiologist. She immigrated to Canada at the age of 14. Her debut short story collection Lemons was published in 2017 by Mansfield Press. She is a co-editor of the only anthology of Polish-Canadian short stories Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction (Guernica Editions, 2017). Her stories were short-listed for the Bristol Prize 2016 and long-listed for CBC Short Story Prize 2010.

Karen Smythe is the author of four books, including a story collection and two novels. Her book on Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro was a groundbreaking study in literary criticism. With a PhD in English, Karen held positions as a professor, a university Registrar, and a Senior Policy Analyst throughout her career, before retiring and writing full time. (Her autoimmune condition has not held her down.) She lives in Guelph with her husband, the writer Keith Hazzard.

J.M. Frey is an author, voice actor, and lapsed academic. She writes queer speculative fiction and fantasy, both fabulist cozy romances and high fantasy epics. Her life’s ambition is to step foot on every continent – only three left! She lives in Toronto where she is surrounded by houseplants, because she is allergic to anything with fur. She is also allergic to chocolate. But not wine.

Adriana Chartrand is a mixed race Native woman. Her dad is Red River Metis born and raised in St Laurent MB and her mom is mixed settler from Portage La Prairie MB. Adriana was born and raised in Winnipeg and has lived in Toronto since 2013. She has an MA in Cinema Studies and has previously worked for the imagineNATIVE Film Festival and Telefilm Canada. She currently works for the City of Toronto and she speaks English and French.