All Write in Sin City

AVA HOMA is a writer, journalist and activist specializing in women’s issues and Middle Eastern affairs. Born and raised in the Kurdistan Province of Iran, Homa now divides her time between Toronto and San Francisco. She holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor. Her collection of short stories, Echoes from the Other Land, was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and she is the inaugural recipient of the PEN Canada–Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship. Her short fiction and translations have appeared in several English and Farsi journals and newspapers, including the Literary Review of Canada, Rabble, the Windsor Review, and the Toronto Star. Daughters of Smoke and Fire is her debut novel.
Ava Homa is another BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor 2020 author.
https://www.avahoma.com/
https://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443460132/daughters-of-smoke-and-fire/

Natalie Zina Walschots, originally from Essex County, is a writer and game designer whose work includes live action role-playing game (LARP) scripts, heavy metal music journalism, video game lore, and weirder things classified as "interactive experiences." Her writing on the interactive adventure The Aluminum Cat won an IndieCade award, and her poetic exploration of the notes engine in Bloodborne was featured in Kotaku and First Person Scholar. She is also an accomplished poet, publishing: Thumbscrews, which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains. Natalie sits on the board of Dames Making Games, a space for queer and gender-marginalized people to create games freely, and where she hosts interactive narrative workshops.  Her first novel, Hench, with the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins Canada,  about a young office temp who discovers the dark side of working for super heroes and super villains, will be released in September 2020, and has already garnered several starred reviews, and  accolades including the Publishers WeeklyWriter to Watch, Amazon’s Top September SFF pick, and Apple Books’ Best Books of September.
If you listen carefully, you might hear Lydia the cat in the background!
https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780062978578/hench/
http://nataliewalschots.com/

Kristyn Dunnion grew up in Essex County, the southernmost tip of Canada, and now lives in Toronto. She is the author of six books, including Tarry This Night and The Dirt Chronicles, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her short fiction is widely published, most recently in Best Canadian Stories 2020, Foglifter, Orca: A Literary Journal, and Toronto 2033. Dunnion works supporting adults with mental illness, and has been a healthy food advocate for marginalized communities. Her latest book is Stoop City, a short story collection which will be released this fall by BIblioasis. Kristyn Dunnion will be part of the Friday Night Fiction panel at this year’s virtual BookFest Windsor on October 16th.
http://biblioasis.com/brand/dunnion-kristyn/
https://www.bookfestwindsor.com/

David Ly is a writer and poet based in Vancouver, BC. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in World Literature, English, and Creative Writing, and a Master of Publishing degree from Simon Fraser University.  He is the author of the chapbook Stubble Burn (2018.) His poetry has appeared in an array of magazines and anthologies, including The Puritan, carte blanche, The Maynard, Pulp Literature, PRISM international, and The /tƐmz/ Review. David has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been long- and short-listed for the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence and the Magpie Award for Poetry, respectively.

His latest book and his first full-length collection is Mythical Man, published earlier this year by Palimpsest Press. David Ly will be appearing at this year’s virtual BookFest Windsor on October 17th.
https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/mythical-man/
https://www.bookfestwindsor.com/

Hana Shafi is a writer and artist who illustrates under the name Frizz Kid. Both her visual art and writing frequently explore themes such as feminism, body politics, racism, and pop culture with an affinity to horror. A graduate of Ryerson University’s Journalism Program, she has published articles in publications such as The Walrus, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Torontoist, Huffington Post, and has been featured on Buzzfeed India, Buzzfeed Canada, CBC, Flare Magazine, Mashable, and Shameless. Known on Instagram for her weekly affirmation series, she is also the recipient of the Women Who Inspire Award, from the Canadian Council for Muslim Women. Born in Dubai, Shafi’s family immigrated to Mississauga, Ontario in 1996, and she currently lives and works in Toronto. Her first book, It Begins With The Body (Book*hug, 2018) was named by CBC as a Poetry Book of the Year.

 Hana Shafi’s latest work is Small Broke, and Kind of Dirty: Affirmations for the Real World, also published by Book*hug, and we’re excited that she will be a guest in this year’s virtual BookFest Windsor on October 17th.
https://bookhugpress.ca/product-category/author/hana-shafi/
Bookfestwindsor.com

Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland, grew up in Trinidad, and lives in Canada. She holds an MA in English from the University of Guelph, writes fiction and poetry, and is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited locally and internationally. Mootoo’s critically acclaimed novels include Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, Valmiki’s Daughter, He Drown She in the Sea, and Cereus Blooms at Night. She is a recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award, a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award from the Lambda Literary Awards. Her work has been longlisted and shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the International DUBLIN Literary Award, and the Man Booker Prize.

Shani Mootoo's latest novel, Polar Vortex, was released by in March 2020, and we’re excited that she will be a guest in this year’s virtual BookFest Windsor on October 16th.

You can find out more about the festival at www.bookfestwindsor.com.

Carol Rose GoldenEagle is a novelist, poet, playwright, visual artist, and musician. She is the author of the award-winning novel Bearskin Diary, published by Nightwood Editions in 2015, which won the Saskatchewan Book Award for its French translation in 2019. A sequel, The Narrows of Fear, will be published in October 2020 by Inanna Publications.  Her novel, Bone Black was released by Nightwood Editions in 2019, and her poetry collection, Hiraeth, a finalist for the 2019 Rasmussen, Rasmussen and Charowsky Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award, was published by Inanna Publications in 2018.  As a visual artist, her work has been exhibited in art galleries across Saskatchewan and Northern Canada. As a musician, she has been featured on a critically acclaimed CD of women’s drum songs. Before pursuing her art on a full-time basis, Carol Rose worked as a journalist for more than 30 years in television and radio at APTN, CTV, and CBC. She lives in Regina.

She will be joining us virtually for the fully online 2020 edition of BookFest Windsor/Festival du Livre Windsor October 15th-18th. For more information on the festival, see bookfestwindsor.com.

Alice Aspinall is a high school mathematics educator and author who lives in Windsor, Ontario. She loves spending time with her husband and two children reading books, playing math games, and exploring the outdoors. She is a strong advocate of the growth mindset. She is continually looking for ways to build young people’s confidence in math and to make math fun, challenging, and satisfying, including through her YouTube channel, “MrsALovesMath.” Alice is also a champion for females in STEM, encouraging girls to pursue science and mathematics in high school and in post-secondary education. Alice believes everyone can learn math and she is on a mission to prove it.

 Alice Aspinall’s book, Everyone Can Learn Math, has been released by EduMatch Publishing. 

Margaret Noodin received an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English and Linguistics from the University of Minnesota. She is currently a professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she also serves as the director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education. 

 She is the author of Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature and Weweni (Wayne State University Press, 2015), a collection of bilingual poems in Ojibwe and English. Her poems and essays have been anthologized and published in New Poets of Native Nations, Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, Poetry, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Water Stone Review and Yellow Medicine Review. She is co-editor of The Papers of the Algonquian Conference and is an advocate for education and community engagement through relevant research and teaching.
Note: After our "conversation close," after Margaret's reading, our post-show chit-chat with Margaret about language evolution and sharing with the next generation was so interesting that we kept it in the show! Enjoy.
Her latest book, What the Chickadee Knows is available in September 2020 from Wayne State University Press. https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/what-chickadee-knows

The first full-length collection from poet and environmental activist Alison Swan, A Fine Canopy, will be released in October by Wayne State University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in many publications, including her poetry chapbooks Before the Snow Moon and Dog Heart, the recent award-winning anthologies Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, and Here: Women Writing on the Upper Peninsula. 

Her work has also been featured in the journals North American Review and TriQuarterly, and The Michigan Poet broadside series and anthology. In 2006, her book Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes was named a Michigan Notable Book. She’s been awarded a Mesa Refuge Residency and the Michigan Environmental Council’s Petoskey Prize for Grassroots Environmental Leadership. She teaches in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University and lives in Ann Arbor.

You can find out more about the book here: https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/series-and-imprints/made-michigan-writers-series