Interpretations of Joni Mitchell: The Luminato Festival and Gathered Light

To celebrate the artistic brilliance and upcoming 70th birthday of Joni Mitchell, the seventh annual Luminato Festival is honouring the Canadian icon with a tribute titled Joni: A Portrait in Song, on Tuesday, June 18th and Wednesday, June 19th. The much-loved festival is on now, between June 14 – June 23, in cultural hubs across the city that best showcase Toronto’s diversity through music, theatre, dance, visual arts, literature, and film.

Mitchell will be present on both evenings of A Portrait In Song, and recently announced that she will also recite a new poem adapted from the writings of the modernist Canadian writer and painter, Emily Carr, with her long-time drummer and collaborator, Brian Blade, and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire.

A bevy of musicians and vocalists will also be interpreting some of Mitchell’s most beloved songs from her past 50 years of influence. Musicians including Rufus Wainwright, Cold Specks, Glen Hansard (Once), Esperanza Spalding, and Herbie Hancock have roots in rock, jazz, folk, and pop that beautifully compliment Joni Mitchell’s legacy of experimentation.

Finally, a Luminato artist panel appreciation of Joni Mitchell took place on Sunday, June 16th with Jon Parales, the chief music critic for The New York Times. Mitchell and Brian Blade discussed her mastery of multiple genres, and her role in the evolution of late 20th-century music. In keeping with Luminato’s tenet of accessibility, the panel discussion was available as a live stream on youtube, which you can watch again in the video above.

Speaking of Joni Mitchell’s genre-spanning impact, we’re proud to be spearheading the release of an anthology inspired by the literary talents of Mitchell. Gathered Light: The Poetry of Joni Mitchell’s Songs, features essays, poetry, and short fiction by writers such as Wally Lamb, Fred Wah, and some of Mitchell’s oldest friends and colleagues who are deeply moved by Mitchell’s revelatory words. Gathered Light will place Mitchell’s words under the lens of poetry for the very first time. Joni Mitchell has also given this project her personal blessing, with newly edited lyrics and her self-portrait for the cover art. Stay tuned for more information on this landmark release, as well as how you can win your very own copy!

For more inside the mind of this great Canadian artist, be sure to check out an interview conducted by CBC’s The National while Mitchell is in Toronto for Luminato. Jian Ghomeshi talks to Mitchell about her legacy and looking back on her music, wherein Mitchell admits that painting is her artistic mother tongue. Highlights include Mitchell spontaneously and perfectly reciting The Fishbowl, a poem she wrote at the age of 16 about the misery of fame. Check out the interview here.

Celebrating Afghanistan: Dr. Sharifa Sharif in Kingston for CW4WA’s 9th Annual Gala

On Friday May 3rd, Dr.  Sharifa Sharif, author of On The Edge of Being: An Afghan Women’s Journey will be a special guest at the Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan’s 9^th Annual Gala.

Founded in 1996, CW4WA is a not-for-profit organization with the dual goal of advancing educational opportunities for Afghan women and educating Canadians about human rights in Afghanistan. The organization advocates the emancipatory power of education for women and young girls, the benefits of which extend to their communities.  Apolitical in nature, CW4WA manages donor-funded projects in association with Afghan civil society organizations to develop community schools, libraries, teacher training, adult literacy, and computer classes.

In On The Edge of Being, Sharif provides an account of an Afghan woman’s struggle against conservative traditions that not only hold back the women in her community, but also Afghanistan as a whole. Born and raised in Afghanistan, Dr. Sharif studied comparative literature in the U.S. before becoming a dual Afghan-Canadian citizen. She now lives near Toronto where she works as a journalist and community activist.

Other guests at the Gala include journalist Mellissa Fung, a former CBC-TV journalist for The National and author of Under An Afghan Sky, a memoir that recounts her 2008 kidnapping in Afghanistan where she was held captive for 28 days.

The place of LGBTQ stories in YA

Young adult literature, a genre previously scoffed at for its supposed naivete,  has recently started to benefit from a much-deserved sense of legitimacy among critics and readers alike.

Within a relatively short span of time, YA literature has established a strong fan base among teens and adults, and is starting to introduce a more mixed bag of narratives. Throw in the recent rise of popular YA film adaptations, and you have a market that demands a second look.

But common misconceptions continue to cling to the genre, both in terms of what many assume is in YA’s limited scope of creativity, and the topics some believe YA should just leave alone. But how can one judge what topics define teen experience?

Carolyn Pogue’s latest workshop is titled “Raising the Dead: Harvest your family tree…”

And what a title it is! Though some might think it’s got zombie overtones, Carolyn Pogue’s multi-Saturday workshops at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre in Calgary will bring up family history as a great source of inspiration for plotting and character development in story writing. Carolyn bases these workshops in part from the Gwen novels, a young adult historical series loosely based on the life of her grandmother, a British Home Child.

The workshops run for three Saturdays, April 6th, 13th and 27th, from 10 am to 3 pm.

Find out more at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre site.

A couple of poems from the archive for International Women’s Day – part 2

From Lnu and Indians We’re Called by Rita Joe

My Grandmother

A couple of poems from the archive for International Women’s Day – part 1

d’bi young from art on black

Leora Freedman’s Parachuting: A cross-cultural young adult novel

Award winning author, Leora Freedman, is well-known among literary journals for her crossover young adult novels and short fiction. A citizen of the US, Canada, and Israel, Freedman has traveled extensively in pursuit of her multidisciplinary interests. With a wide spectrum of experience under her belt, she weaves resonant stories of young characters searching for a sense of belonging, while staying true to their cross-cultural roots.

Currently available through Three O’Clock Press is Freedman’s Parachuting, a young adult novel about a Jewish teen coming of age in Connecticut during the early 1970s. 16 year-old Zoe goes through a whirlwind of change