Great Lakes Waterworks Discussion Series 2017-2018, @ New College
Writing Water Futures:
Ceremonies and Science Fiction
Readings and conversations with Nina Munteanu and Gwen Benaway two Toronto-based writers exploring the meaning of water in their work
When: December 07, 2017|6:30-8:30 p.m
Where: The Atrium@New College, University of Toronto, 45 Willcocks St
Join us for readings and conversation between Gwen Benaway and Nina Munteanu, two Toronto-based writers exploring the meaning of water in their works. University of Toronto anthropologist Kristen Bos will moderate a discussion between Munteanu and Benaway on their process and the significance of creative writing about the meaning of water today. This is part of the Great Lakes Waterworks discussion series.
Gwen Benaway will read from her 2015 book Passage, her second collection of poetry.
This Magazine writes: In this book, award-winning poet Gwen Benaway journeys through ancestral and geographic origins, trauma history, and gender identity. Broken into five sections named after the Great Lakes, the poems within Passage are a testament to Benaway’s survival: of violence, of rejection, of being treated recklessly. Through grief, loss, exile, and absence, Benaway asserts that there is no right way to hold hurt—though there are quite brilliant, evocative ways to write about it. Benaway does just that.
Nina Munteanu will read from her 2016 book Water Is… The Meaning of Water….
Part history, part science and part philosophy and spirituality, "Water Is..." combines personal journey with scientific discovery that explores water's many "identities" and ultimately our own. Water, she writes, is magic, life, motion, communication, memory, rhythm, beauty, story, prayer, wisdom and joy.
About the authors
Gwen Benaway is a trans girl poet of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has published two collections of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead and Passage, and her third collection, Holy Wild, is forthcoming from BookThug in 2018. She has received many distinctions and awards, including the Dayne Ogilvie Honour of Distinction for Emerging Queer Authors from the Writer's Trust of Canada. Her poetry and essays have been published in national publications and anthologies, including The Globe and Mail, Maclean's Magazine, CBC Arts, and many others.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist and internationally published novelist of science fiction and fantasy. In addition to eight published novels, Nina has written award-nominated short stories, articles and non-fiction books, which have been translated into several languages throughout the world. Recognition for her work includes the Midwest Book Review Reader’s Choice Award, finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award, the SLF Fountain Award, and The Delta Optimist Reviewers Choice. Nina regularly publishes reviews and essays in magazines such as The New York Review of Science Fiction and Strange Horizons.
About the moderator
Kristen Bos is a Métis archaeologist, anthropologist, activist, and researcher of Indigenous material culture. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford and a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS) Doctoral Scholarship and the President’s Award for Outstanding Native Student of the Year. She is also the lab manager for the Technoscience Research Unit and the T.A. trainer for the Social Sciences at the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation. Her research engages with the material culture of the Métis, Indigenous feminism, and settler colonial studies with an emphasis on decolonizing methodologies and transgressing disciplinary boundaries.
