Welcome Spring with Vagabonds! This Friday May 14

THE VAGABOND TRUST Reading Series presents your chance to welcome Spring with our May lineup of poets and playwrights. Join us this Friday May 14, at 9PM at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library in Kensington Market, for a sweet city night of blooming literary talent with whippersnappers SHANNON BRAMER, BRIANA BROWN, ROBIN RICHARDSON, JOSH STEWART and JULIE TEPPERMAN.

Featuring a special artist talk by May’s featured artist ZEESY POWERS!

with your ever rambunctious hosts KATHLEEN BROWN, DARRAH TEITEL and BLAIR TREWARTHA.

ABOUT THIS MONTH’S READERS:

SHANNON BRAMER is a poet and playwright. Her books include: suitcases and other poems, scarf, and most recently, The Refrigerator Memory, with Coach House Books. In February 2010 she published a chapbook entitled “BE MINE” (love poems!) with Bookthug, and donated profits to Doctors Without Borders to support post-earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. She lives in Toronto.

BRIANA BROWN has created and performed in a number of her own works and collaborations which have been presented at such theatre festivals as Winnipeg’s FemFest, Spring Arts Fair (Tarragon), HotScrawls, Rhubarb!, and Nightwood Theatre’s Write from the Hip program. This summer Briana’s work can be seen at fringe festivals in London (Cassandra), Toronto (Almost, Again.), Orlando and Victoria (Reckless Daughters, collective).

ZEESY POWERS is a young interdisciplinary artist who works with light, her body and other people. Her work has screened around the world, and her most recent projection performance, The Ghost, has been performed in Japan, Berlin, Los Angeles and Montreal. Her current project, One Month Relationship, is a joke that is too real. She exists both on- and off-line.

ROBIN RICHARDSON is a writer and illustrator. Her work has appeared in The Toronto Quarterly, Contemporary Verse 2, The Puritan, Misunderstandings Magazine, Filling Station, The Pilot Project, and is forthcoming in Berkeley Poetry Review. Though she currently lives in Toronto, she will be moving to New York in the Fall to pursue an MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.

JOSH STEWART is a Mississauga-based poet who enjoys sushi, hats, and Tuesdays. His first poetry chapbook, Invention of the Curveball, was released with Cactus Press in 2008.

JULIE TEPPERMAN is an actor, playwright & educator. She is also co-founding artistic director of Convergence Theatre (with Aaron Willis), creators of the hit plays AutoShow (named #4 in NOW Magazine’s Top Ten Toronto Productions of ’06), The Gladstone Variations (4 Dora nominations, including best production, play & direction) &Yichud (Seclusion), which recently played to sold-out houses at Theatre Passe Muraille. Julie is currently working on a re-imagining of the August Strindberg play The Father for the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre as part of Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Master Playwright Festival, January 2011.

The Vagabond Trust gratefully acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council.

Get Lucky with Vagabonds! Feb 12!

THE VAGABOND TRUST Reading Series presents your chance to get Lucky in Love and Lit this Friday February 12 2010!
9 to 11 pm at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library in Kensington Market.

Join the Vagabonds for a sizzling hot night of literary debauchery with heartthrobs GUY COOLS, LAUREN KIRSHNER, ADRIENNE KRESS, JASON MAGHANOY, SANDY POOL and SARAH TEITEL

with musical rar-rar by DJ BRONSON LEE!

and foxy hosts KATHLEEN BROWN, DARRAH TEITEL and BLAIR TREWARTHA

February’s Featured Artist is YUULA BENIVOLSKI

ABOUT THIS MONTH’S READERS:

GUY COOLS (Antwerp, BE) After having trained as a dramaturge, Guy Cools became involved with the new developments in dance in Flanders from the 1980’s, initially as a dance critic and from 1990 onwards as theatre and dance director of Arts Centre Vooruit in Ghent. He curated dance events in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Venice and Montréal.

In 2002, he left Vooruit to dedicate himself fulltime to production dramaturgy in dance with amongst others Les Ballets C. de la B., Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (B), Danièle Desnoyers (Montréal), Akram Khan (London), Christopher House (Toronto Dance Theatre). With Lin Snelling, he developed an improvised performance practice, Repeating Distance. He regularly gives lectures and publishes in Belgium, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Holland and Greece. Since 2004 he has been living in Montréal.

LAUREN KIRSHNER is the author of Where We Have to Go, a novel called “a very strong original debut” by The Globe and Mail and “evocative and compelling” by Quill and Quire. The story of a girl’s coming-of-age in 1990s Toronto, Where We Have to Go is forthcoming in German and Dutch translation.

Lauren is a graduate of The University of Toronto’s Masters of English in the Field of Creative Writing, where she was mentored by Margaret Atwood. Her short stories, arts reviews, and poetry have appeared in publications including The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine,The Toronto Star, Now, The Hart House Review, and Exile. In 2009, Lauren created Sister Writes, a creative writing workshop for marginalized women in Toronto’s downtown west end.

Recently, Lauren was named Toronto’s “Best Emerging Author” by NOW magazine.

ADRIENNE KRESS is the author of Alex and the Ironic Gentleman and Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate (Scholastic Canada). She is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in the UK. Along with a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, her first novel, Alex, has been published around the world and was featured in both the New York Post as a “Post Potter Pick”, as well as on the CBS Early Show as one of a dozen children’s books “you should know about”. It also recently won the Heart of Hawick Children’s Book Award in the UK and has also been nominated for the Red Cedar Award. The sequel, Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate, came out earlier this year. Her plays have been performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, among other venues in Canada and the UK.

Also an actress, Adrienne is a member of the Tempest Theatre Group here in Toronto, and a founding member/correspondent for the geektastic website HardcoreNerdity.com.

JASON MAGHANOY is a professional playwright represented by Great North Artists.  He is a graduate of McGill University, The National Theatre School of Canada’s Playwriting Program and was a member of the 2006 Banff PlayRites Colony.  He has received grants for his work from the Ontario and Toronto Arts Council’s, and his plays have been directed by some of Canada’s leading directors, including Guy Sprung and Sarah Stanley.  Previous productions include: The Corner, as part of the 2008 Next Stage Theatre Festival at the Factory Theatre; Gas, as part of the 2010 Next Stage Theatre Festival at the Factory Theatre; a remount of Dust, as part of the 2010 Wildside Festival at the Centaur Theatre, Montreal.  Upcoming: Gas, in translation at the People’s Theatre, Tokyo Japan.  Currently, Jason is developing two new plays as the playwright-in-residence at Cahoots Theatre Projects.

SANDY POOL is a writer and classically trained theatre artist who lives in Toronto. Sandy holds a degree in Theatre and English from the University of Toronto, as well as a Master’s of Fine Arts degree In Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her work work has been published in many literary journals across Canada including The Antigonish Review,The Capilano Review,Contemporary Verse 2, dandelion,The Fiddlehead, Grain and Sub-terrain.  Currently, Sandy teaches at Humber College. Her fist book “Exploding Into Night” was just released with Guernica Editions in December.

SARAH TEITEL is a Toronto writer and artist. She is currently at work on a first collection of poetry, and a series of paintings that incorporate MRI images of the human brain.

The Vagabond Trust gratefully acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council.

Vagabond Trust READS! Feb 12, 2010!

Vagabond Reads! Feb 12!

Break In! on Thursday, February 4, 2010!

Vagabond Reads host and curator BLAIR TREWARTHA is launching his chapbook “Break In” (Cactus Press) on Thursday, February 4th at the Black Swan Tavern (154 Danforth Ave) at 7:30pm. We urge you from the bottom of our hobo hearts to brave the winter and come out to give him literary paddywhacks along with hosts Jim Johnstone and Schwan McLeod. This chapbook kicks it up a notch, chekkit:

Misunderstandings Mag Issue 13  is also being launched that same night.
Nyla Matuk and Matt Leslie, who read for the Vagabond Trust October reading at Lola’s are in the readers lineup along with Michael Lista, Liz Howard, Robin Richardson and Andrew McEwan.

Two raucous publications, for (perhaps?) one wicked price. Open MIC (that’s right you animals, get down there with your villanelles and your spoken word!). FREE snacks! Beer!!

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Your friendly neighbourhood VAGABOND READS returns in February . . . deets coming soon via Bison Express.