Daniel Rotsztain
Summer 2020
Daniel Rotsztain is the Urban Geographer, an artist, writer, and cartographer whose work examines our relationship to the places we inhabit. The author of All the Libraries Toronto, Daniel is a frequent contributor to CBC Radio, and has had work featured in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and New York Magazine. He is the co-lead of plazaPOPS, a community-lead project to create public gathering places in strip mall parking lots across Toronto’s inner suburbs and beyond.
Mahlikah Awe:ri
Summer 2020
A Canadian Poet Of Honour, Mahlikah Awe:ri, Enml’ga’t Saqama’sgw, (The Womxn Who Stands and Walks In The Light) is an award-winning; Haudenosaunee Kanien’kéhà:ka & Mi’kmaw L’sitkuk of the Wolf Clan, from the Territory of Kahnawá:ke and the Unceded traditional homelands of the Mi’kma’ki of Kespukwitk, with 9 Generations of Black Loyalist, African American, Afro-Caribbean and Irish Ancestry. Awe:ri is an acclaimed Spoken Word Artist, Arts Educator, Eco-Influencer, Public Speaker, Performance Artist, Curator and Emerging O’nikòn:ra Guide. Shifting paradigms through Indigenized ways of knowing and being; while reimagining what it means to be “In-Relation”, to the Land and to each other.
A.F. Moritz & Blaise Moritz
Summer 2020
A. F. Moritz’s most recent books of poems are As Far As You Know (2020) and The Sparrow: Selected Poems (2018), both from House of Anansi Press. Blaise Moritz is an artist and writer living in East Toronto. He is the author of two books of poems, Crown and Ribs (Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2007) and Zeppelin (Nightwood Editions, 2013).
Esie Mensah
Summer 2020
Esie Mensah is someone whose work – every performance, project, and partnership – embodies the multifaceted artist, and whose creative footprint extends to many genres, disciplines and regions. As a dancer, choreographer, movement director and speaker, Esie brings her mastery in storytelling to audiences as diverse as her experience. From working with megastars like Rihanna, Drake, Arcade Fire, and Janelle Monae to historied brands like Coca Cola, Luminato, TIFF, ROM, AGO, Shaw Festival, Soulpepper Theatre and Toronto Raptors (to name a few), Esie Mensah’s creations show no sign of limits or slowing down.
Bekah Brown
Summer 2020
Bekah is a multi-disciplinary artist of Anishinaabe and mixed European descent who grew up in northern Alberta on Dene territory. Her work reflects what she sees in society. She is continually learning her Anishinaabe culture, using her creative practices to connect and heal. She aims to use the platforms she can access to amplify the voices of Indigenous women and to foreground issues colonialism perpetuates.
Dan Bergeron
Summer 2020
Dan Bergeron is a public artist who employs a range of styles, themes and materials to activate and explore the meaning of our shared public spaces. The shape, texture and location of a site and its history or current uses dictate the form and content of his projects. Dan’s projects are sometimes commissioned and sometimes uncommissioned; sometimes temporary and sometimes permanent. His public installations aim to open a dialog with viewers, promoting engagement through both intimate familiarity and wonder at the unexpected. Dan has installed uncommissioned works in cities around the world including London, New York, Paris and Amsterdam. He has completed commissions for the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto and the Luminato Festival as well as creating permanent public artworks for the City of Toronto, the City of Richmond, BC and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Dan lives in Toronto with his partner and their two young boys.
Ani Castillo
Summer 2020
Ani Castillo is first and foremost a Fellow Human. She was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. It was pouring rain on that summer day and she loved life from the first breath. Ani became a newspaper cartoonist at age 20, by pure accident. For the next 14 years her cartoons were published in Mexican and Canadian newspapers. These days she’s an author and her books are published in New York and translated to several different languages around the world. She lives in Toronto with her beloved daughters.
Anne Michaels
Summer 2020
Anne Michaels is a novelist and poet. Her books are translated into more than fifty languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. Among many other honours she is a Guggenheim Fellow, has received honorary degrees, and has served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. Her novel FUGITIVE PIECES was adapted as a feature film.