Speakers for this event

• Aparita Bhandari

  Aparita Bhandari

  Moderator

  Aparita Bhandari is an arts and life reporter in Toronto. She has been published in Canadian media including CBC, the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and Walrus magazine. Her areas of interest and expertise lie in the intersections of gender, culture and ethnicity. She is the producer and co-host of the Hindi language podcast, KhabardaarPodcast.com.

  Moderator

• Dawn Promislow

  Dawn Promislow

  Author

  Dawn Promislow was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, and has lived in Toronto since 1987. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers where she was mentored by Olive Senior, and she was mentored by Nalo Hopkinson in Diaspora Dialogues's short-form mentorship program. Her collection Jewels and Other Stories (Mawenzi House, 2010) was critically acclaimed, long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and named one of the eight best debuts of 2011 by The Globe and Mail. Dawn has published short stories, poems, and essays, in literary journals in Canada, the US, and the UK, where they have been short-listed for awards. Wan, her novel, was published by Freehand Books on May 1, 2022.

  Author

• Reema Patel

  Reema Patel

  Author

  REEMA PATEL holds a B.A. from McGill University and a J.D. from the University of Windsor. After working in Mumbai in the youth non-profit sector and in human rights advocacy, she has spent the last ten years working in provincial and municipal government. Such Big Dreams is her first novel, an excerpt of which won the Penguin Random House Student Award for Fiction at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she works as a lawyer.

  Author

• Sheila Murray

  Sheila Murray

  Author

  Sheila Murray’s short fiction has been published in various literary journals including Descant, The Dalhousie Review, and The New Quarterly. Finding Edward is her first novel. Murray is an advocate for social justice and climate change response and currently works as project director with CREW (Community Resilience to Extreme Weather). She was born in St. Albans, England and now lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

  Author