“Goodness gracious am I ever looking forward to this!”
KYLE FLEMMER, Poet, Publisher THE BLASTED TREE
8/7 3PM KLARA DU PLESSIS & KADIE SALMON SKIN & MEAT SKY LAUNCH
FERTILE FESTIVAL OF NEW & INVENTIVE WORKS
05-28 August
The Great Escape Book Store 957 Kingston Rd
Curated by The Blasted Tree + Gap Riot Press + KFB
GET YOUR FESTIVAL PASS TODAY!
Jake Byrne‘s work has been published in journals throughout North America. Jake’s first two collections of poetry are forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn’s Buckrider Books and Brick Books in Spring 2023 and Fall 2024 respectively. Find them @jakebyrnewrites.
Sagan Yee (they/them) is a media artist and organizer based for the moment in Treaty 13/Dish With One Spoon territory, Toronto. Their creative practice includes animation, speculative fiction, video games, playful experiences, and alternative controller collaborations. Catch them on Twitter @SaganYee.
Jacqueline Valencia is a Toronto-based writer/editor/critic and earned her Honours BA in English at the University of Toronto. She is the author of various essays and poetry books, including There Is No Escape Out of Time (Insomniac Press, 2016). She is a project partner at Poetry inPrint and a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada. Currently working on her next poetry collection tentatively titled, Space.
Eric Schmaltz is a poet, academic, and editor. He holds a Ph.D. from York University, where he studied Canadian and avant-garde literature. He is the author of Surfaces (Invisible Publishing) and several shorter works, including Language in Hues (Timglaset). He is also co-editor of I Want to Tell You Love by bill bissett and Milton Acorn. A former SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, he is currently Writer-on-the-Grounds at York University’s Glendon College.
Aaron Tucker is a poet and novelist whose second novel John-Marion-Ethan will be published by Coach House Books in Spring 2023. His latest poetry collection, Catalogue d’oiseaux, was published by Book*hug Press in Spring 2021 and his most recent chapbook, Settler Education was published by model press. He is currently a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Arts at York University studying facial recognition technologies. He was born in Vernon, British Columbia on the territory of Syilx people and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, which has been traditionally care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Huron-Wendat.
MA|DE (est. 2018) is a collaborative writing entity, a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third; it is the name given to the joint authorship of Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace, artists whose active solo practices differ quite radically from one another. MA|DE’s writing has appeared in various literary journals and three chapbooks. Their third chapbook, A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books, 2020), shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, was the seed for their recently completed debut collection, ZZOO. [ma-de.ca]
Leslie Joy Ahenda was educated at the University of Victoria the University of Guelph. Her work has appeared in Brick Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Fiddlehead, and more, and she will be featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2023. Her previous chapbook, Threnody for a Drowned Girl (2021) was published by Moon Jelly House. She lives in Tkaronto.
Kyle Flemmer is an author, editor, and publisher from Calgary in Treaty 7 territory. Kyle founded The Blasted Tree Publishing Company in 2014 and served as Managing Editor of filling Station magazine from 2018-2020. He has published several chapbooks of visual poetry, most recently Little Songs by No Press and The Heavy Crown by nOIR:Z. Kyle’s first book, Barcode Poetry, was published by The Blasted Tree in 2021.
Winner of the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award, Klara du Plessis’ debut collection, Ekke, was released from Palimpsest Press. Her second book is Hell Light Flesh,2020. Klara is a poet, scholar, and literary curator, developing Deep Curation as an experimental practice of poetry reading organization. She resides in Montreal.
Kadie Salmon has been exhibiting internationally for over a decade and has received support from Arts Council England to The Henry Moore Foundation. She is a photographer, sculptor, and moving image artist based in London, where she is represented by gallery New Art Projects. Kadie is currently working on her newest work Closing Bones supported by the Freelands Foundation. NOTE: Kadie Salmon will not be in attendance at the Festival.
knife | fork | book 