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SOLD OUTIrving Layton was one of Canada’s most powerful, groundbreaking voices, and an important and influential writer whose distinguished career spanned almost 45 years. He was the recipient of numerous awards for his poetry and for his contribution to Canadian Literature, and was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Layton died in Montreal in January 2006. He was 93.
March 12, 2012, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of Canada's greatest poets. Featuring 18 participants, the Irving Layton Centenary Celebration honours the memory of one of Canada’s finest talents as part of a number of celebrations happening across the country from Cape Breton to Vancouver Island.
$15/$5 members, students, youth 25 and under
Participants:
Margaret Atwood
Barry Callaghan
Leonard Cohen (appearing by video)
Scott Griffin
Joe Kertes
Max Layton
Dennis Lee
Michael Mirolla
Jacob McArthur Mooney
Anna Porter (appearing by video)
Robert Priest
John Rammell
Julie Roorda
Rosemary Sullivan
Elizabeth Trott
Priscila Uppal
Fred Wah
Moses Znaimer
*Note: Leonard Cohen and Anna Porter will not be in attendance but will participate with a pre-recorded presentation
For more information on events happening nation-wide click
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Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. The Year of the Flood is a follow-up to her novel Oryx and Crake. Her most recent publication, In Other Worlds, was published in fall 2011. Her books have won numerous awards, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Man Booker International Prize, and Premio Letterario Internazionale Mondello in Italy. Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
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Novelist, poet, and man of letters Barry Callaghan, is included in every major Canadian anthology. His fiction and poetry have been translated into seven languages. His works include Hogg, The Poems And Drawings; Between Trains; and Beside Still Waters. Founder of the quarterly and press, Exile and Exile Editions, Callaghan is also Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar at York University. He has received several awards and honours including the City of Toronto Award for Writing, National Magazine Awards, President’s Medal Award for Excellence in Journalism, Pushcart Prize, and the inaugural W. O. Mitchell Award for a body of work.
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Scott Griffin is best known as the founder, chairman and trustee of The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry. With an annual award of $200,000, the Griffin Poetry Prize is the largest annual poetry prize for a single book of poetry, in the world. Griffin is the chairman, director and controlling shareholder of House of Anansi Press Inc. He is also the founder, chairman and director of the Scott Griffin Foundation and the founder of Poetry In Voice/Les voix de la poésie, a national, bilingual poetry recitation contest for high school students. Griffin is also Chancellor of Bishop’s University.
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After escaping Hungary with his family after the revolution of 1956, Joseph Kertes (Canada/Hungary) studied English at York University and the University of Toronto, where he was encouraged in his writing by Irving Layton and Marshall McLuhan. Kertes founded Humber College's creative writing and comedy programs. He is currently Humber's Dean of Creative and Performing Arts and is a recipient of numerous awards for teaching and innovation. His first novel, Winter Tulips, won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. His latest novel, Gratitude, won a Canadian National Jewish Book Award and the U.S. National Jewish Book Award for Fiction.
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Dennis Lee is the author of more than 20 books, including Civil Elegies, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, and the children’s classic Alligator Pie. He is also a noted essayist, song lyricist and editor, and was the co-founder of House of Anansi Press in 1967. He was also the recipient of the inaugural Harbourfront Festival Prize. Lee presents his most recent collection of poems, Testament, which explores the dilemma of contemporary existence and reminds us of the catastrophic reality we have made of our planet, while simultaneously insisting on a particular kind of hope for the future.
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Montreal-Toronto corridor author Michael Mirolla’s latest publication is the novella, The Ballad of Martin B. His novel Berlin won the Bressani Prize while a short story, "A Theory of Discontinuous Existence," was featured in The Journey Prize anthology.
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Jacob McArthur Mooney is the author of The New Layman's Almanac and Folk, the latter of which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas International Prize, Trillium Book Award for Poetry and named among the best books of the year by the Globe and Mail and National Post. He lives in Toronto and hosts the bi-weekly Pivot Reading Series.
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Robert Priest’s words have been debated in the legislature, posted in the transit system, turned into a hit song, quoted in the Farmer's Almanac, and sung on Sesame Street. His most recent book, Reading the Bible Backwards, peaked at number two on the Globe and Mail’s poetry list.
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Writer and actor John Rammell has appeared on stages in England and Canada, in plays by writers as diverse as Ibsen, Stoppard and Coward. Solo performances have included readings of work by such poets and writers as Christopher Logue, Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene, and Charles Dickens. As a freelance writer Rammell has written scripts for the BBC and CBC and he has taken part in talking books for the blind through the CNIB. He is also a member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto.
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Julie Roorda is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently Floating. She has also published a collection of short stories entitled Naked in the Sanctuary and a novel for young adults Wings of a Bee. She lives in Toronto.
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Poet and biographer Rosemary Sullivan, is the author of 12 books including By Heart/Elizabeth Smart a Life; Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen; The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out; and Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape and a House in Marseille. For her non-fiction, she has won the Governor General's Literary Award; the City of Toronto Book Prize; the Canadian Authors Association Prize; the Canadian Jewish Books Yad Vashem Award; and the Lorne Pierce Medal for Distinguished Contribution to Canadian Literature. She is the Director of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.
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Elizabeth Trott, a Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University, has contributed to amateur theatre in Toronto for many years as performer, choreographer, and director. She has also worked as a writer-broadcaster for the CBC’s Ideas and is a member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto where she serves as Artistic Director of the Annual Spring Revue.
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Priscila Uppal is a poet, novelist, and York University professor. Her international publications include Ontological Necessities which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Traumatology, Successful Tragedies, Winter Sport: Poems, the novels The Divine Economy of Salvation and To Whom It May Concern, and the study We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy. Her works have been translated into numerous languages including Dutch, Greek, Korean, Latvian, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian.
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Fred Wah has been involved in writing, editing, and teaching since the 1960’s. His recent books of poetry include Sentenced to Light and is a door and selected poetry edited by Louis Cabri, The False Laws of Narrative. The Parliamentary Poet Laureate for 2012 – 2013, he splits his time between the Kootenays in southeastern B.C. and Vancouver.
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Media-maestro, multi-channel creator, ideaCity impresario, and ZoomerMedia Founder and CEO Moses Znaimer spotted Irving’s spark long before the world would come to know it. He gave young "Moishe" his first real lessons in literature, history, grammar, and the art of composition at Montreal's United Talmud Torah, a Jewish parochial high school. In touch through Moses' McGill years, Moses later involved Irving in his broadcast productions including the now-famous "drop in" with fellow pal Leonard Cohen on his MuchMusic set on the occasion of Irving's 85th birthday.
