Tzavta #29
Vivek Shraya
Vivek is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art and film. Her album with Queer Songbook Orchestra, Part-Time Woman, was included in CBC’s list of Best Canadian Albums of 2017, and her first book of poetry, even this page is white, won a 2017 Publisher Triangle Award. Her best-selling new book, I’m Afraid of Men, was heralded by Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel.” She is one half of the music duo Too Attached and the founder of the publishing imprint VS Books.
A Polaris Music Prize nominee and four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, Vivek was a 2016 Pride Toronto Grand Marshal, and has received honours from The Writers’ Trust of Canada and CBC’s Canada Reads. She is currently a director on the board of the Tegan and Sarah Foundation and an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Calgary.
Suzette Mayr
Suzette is the author of five novels, including her most recent book Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall. Her fourth novel, Monoceros, won the ReLit Award and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, was longlisted for the 2011 Giller Prize, and nominated for a Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction and the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. Monoceros was also included on The Globe and Mail’s 100 Best Books of 2011. Her novels have also been nominated for the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book. She has done inter-disciplinary work with Calgary theatre company Theatre Junction, visual artists Lisa Brawn and Geoff Hunter, and she was a writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary and at Widener University, Pennsylvania. She is a former President of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. She currently lives in a 1950s Calgary bungalow with her partner, two cats, one dog, and many, many spiders.
