The Factory Reading Series, August 21, 2025: Currin, Heinis, JAAWORD + Pirie,
Schedule
Thu Aug 21 2025 at 07:00 pm to 10:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Avant-Garde Bar | Ottawa, ON
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The Factory Reading Series Presents:readings by:
Jen Currin (Vancouver)
Shery Alexander Heinis (Ottawa)
Jamaal Amir Akbari/JAAWORD (Ottawa)
Pearl Pirie (QC)
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Doors 7pm / Reading 7:30pm
Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa
Jen Currin has published two collections of stories, Disembark (House of Anansi, 2024) and Hider/Seeker (Anvil Press, 2018), which was a finalist for a ReLit Award and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book. They have also published five collections of poetry, including Trinity Street (House of Anansi, 2023) and The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010), which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for a LAMBDA and two other awards. Currin lives on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Halkomelem-speaking peoples, including the Qayqayt, Musqueam, Kwikwetlem, and Kwantlen Nations, in New Westminster, BC. They teach creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Shery Alexander Heinis is a St. Lucia born poet, writer, and former diplomat. She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of In Our Tongues Reading and Art Series, an Ottawa-based arts non-profit that showcases, nurtures, and advances Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists from the National Capital Region and across Canada. She is the author of A Greater Whole, as well as her debut poetry collection, Splinter (self-published). Her work has appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine, the League of Canadian Poets’ Black History Month Chapbook, These Lands, Bywords, In\Words and more. She has been a feature reader at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, Versefest Ottawa and Tree Reading Series among others. Shery is featured in BREATH, a multimedia immersive art installation and the documentary film FOUR WOMEN on Bell Fibe TV1 and CBC Gem.
Jamaal Amir Akbari or JAAWORD is an award winning poet, songwriter, recording, screen and performance artist, arts educator and creative entrepreneur. He is Ottawa’s 2017-2019 Poet Laureate Emeritus, and his career in arts education earned him 2016's Ontario Arts Educator Award.
He has brought his work to audiences nationally and abroad, and served as Carleton University’s Artist in Residence for the 2019-2020 school year. He also founded the Origin Arts & Community Centre in 2015, a performance arts hub on the edge of Ottawa’s Hintonburg neighbourhood that provides an event space for performing artists to share their passion.
His topics range from emotional maturity to black heritage, from parenting to the human condition. He resides in rural Marathon Village, ON, with his wife and 8 children, using the national capital region as his launch pad to teach, mentor and advocate for the arts.
Pearl Pirie lives quietly & slowly in rural Quebec and Ottawa. Her latest is “we astronauts” from Pinhole Poetry. www.pearlpirie.com
https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-factory-reading-series-august-21.html
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Where is it happening?
Avant-Garde Bar, 135½ Besserer St.,Ottawa, Ontario, CanadaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
