The Word On The Street is more than a festival, it’s a community! Get to know our team, working year-round to help you discover great books by Canadian and Indigenous authors.
Festival Director
david@thewordonthestreet.ca
David Alexander is the Festival Director for The Word On The Street Toronto. A published poet with over a decade of nonprofit leadership experience, David helped build Toronto’s Veg Food Fest, North America’s largest annual vegetarian food festival. His first book, After the Hatching Oven, was released by Nightwood Editions in 2018.
David manages artistic programming and overall festival production.
Programming Manager
maya@thewordonthestreet.ca
Maya Baumann joined the WOTS team in 2017, excited to braid together her passion for the literary arts and her background in arts management, diaspora and Indigenous studies. Since, she has been helping connect diverse thinkers and creating platforms for them to share their ideas.
Maya manages artistic programming and relations with programming partners.
DIGITAL STRATEGY & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
rebecca@thewordonthestreet.ca
Rebecca Diem writes smart and hopeful speculative fiction and poetry. She is the author of the indie steampunk series Tales of the Captain Duke and a Tor.com contributor. An avid bookworm, Rebecca was once honoured to receive the ‘Nose in a Book’ award from her elementary school librarian. Somewhere between reading Virginia Woolf and Neil Gaiman she began to write her own stories, and has no plans to stop.
Rebecca manages communications, marketing strategy, and social media.
Events Manager
sienna@thewordonthestreet.ca
Sienna Tristen is an author and poet who explores queer platonic partnership, the nonhuman world, and mythmaking in their work. A purveyor of many skills and talents, Sienna can lead a yoga class, speak to you in three and a half languages, and climb forty feet in the air on a pair of silks. Between spreadsheets and production schedules, they are currently working on their second novel.
Sienna manages event logistics and the festival’s exhibitor marketplace.
production coordinator
juliana@thewordonthestreet.ca
Juliana Pandurević is a journalist with extensive experience in digital media, creative arts and event production. She has worked for Bell Media Radio and World Wildlife Fund Canada. A storyteller and seeker, you can usually find her on Toronto Metropolitan’s campus with her nose in a news article or war fiction novel.
Assistant coordinator, programming
kit@thewordonthestreet.ca
Kit Domanski is a video essayist and horror fiction aficionado studying cinema at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on disgust, queer intimacies, folklore, childhood and spooky monsters. She loves stories about houses that are alive and people that are not.
Assistant coordinator, social media
Olivia@thewordonthestreet.ca
Olivia Whetstone is a literary influencer and blogger at The Candid Cover. A professional bookworm, she has a passion for making strangely specific book lists, throwing her favourite reads for the sake of TikTok content (on soft surfaces, she promises), and sharing her love for literature with anyone who will listen. Last year, she read a staggering 206 books, and she hopes to continue reading anything she can get her hands on between sharing her excitement for Canadian and Indigenous authors and publishers.
Assistant coordinator, Festival marketplace
weadee@thewordonthestreet.ca
Weadee Mombo is a lover of stories, though not always written with words. Some day she writes them, most days she reads them but these days she loves hearing them through music and art. She studies Political Science with French Specialization and Communication, Media and Film at the University of Windsor. She is still plotting her path in the pathless woods but currently has her sights set on petting all the cats in the world.
PUBLICIST
DSHEHORI@GMAIL.COM
SPONSORSHIP & MARKETING CONSULTANT
KIM@THEWORDONTHESTREET.CA
David Leonard, President
Amanda Olson, Vice President
Masood Abid, Treasurer
Nancy Cooper
Evan Dickson
Lauren Hummel
Cindy Ma
Grace O’Connell
Mary Sadlier
Alex Snider
David Torchetti
