☀️August 11, 2025: Reading with Steven Mayoff in Charlottetown, PEI at Beaconsfield Historic House (The Carriage House). Starts at 7 p.m.
Steven Mayoff (he/him) was born in Montreal and moved to Prince Edward Island in 2001. His books include the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), the novel Our Lady of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015), the poetry chapbook Leonard’s Flat (Grey Borders Books, 2018), the poetry collection Swinging Between Water and Stone (Guernica Editions, 2019) and the novel The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief (Radiant Press, 2023). As a lyricist, he has collaborated with composer Ted Dykstra on Dion a Rock Opera, which will receive its world premiere at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto in February 2024. His website is www.stevenmayoff.ca
Swinging Between Water and Stone is divided into four sections that, respectively, loosely represent Birth, Life, Death, and Rebirth. Reincarnation, seen as lacking empirical evidence, is often taken on faith. And yet, something as commonplace as the cycles of the seasons can provide clues to the mysteries that may lie beyond our mortality, offering a way to make sense of the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. These poems are meant to celebrate the wheels within wheels that are constantly in motion throughout the natural world and in our imagined landscapes.
“I was especially impressed by the joyous irreverence of Half a Poem, the delicate linguistic turns in Safe Words, and how Glasgow (Revisited) reshapes the very way you read.”
K. R. Wilson, author of Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia, long-listed for the Leacock Medal for Humour
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health,moir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM and a host on The New Book Network. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.
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