On August 25, 2018, The Fiddlehead hosted the first of our planned events leading up to our 75th anniversary in 2020. We brought Alicia Elliott, our nonfiction editor, and Rebecca Thomas to Fredericton to give workshops, and while they were here, we organized a reading that also featured local Fredericton writer Anthazia Kadir.
Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts (for a Public Outreach Grant), the Fredericton Public Library, and Ty Giffin and Mathew Gracie (videographers). And thanks to Anthazia, Alicia, and Rebecca for their superb readings!
Anthazia Kadir reads some poetry and a fragment from a short story.
Anthazia Kadir has worked as an educator, a journalist, and travel writer in her native country, Guyana. She has also dabbled in poetry and theatre. Anthazia has published two novels, What a Woman Wants in 2009 and a translation of Afzal Shaq’s Daughter of Pharaoh from Pashto and Urdu into English in 2011. Anthazia continues to work in education and facilitates Creative Writing workshops for seniors and immigrants.
Alicia Elliott reads from one of her short stories.
Alicia Elliott, a Tuscarora writer, has written for Globe and Mail, CBC, Hazlitt and others. Her essays have been nominated for and won National Magazine Awards, and her short fiction was selected for Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and Journey Prize Stories. Tanya Talaga selected Alicia to receive the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award this year. Her first book, A Mind Spread Out On The Ground, will be published in March 2019 by Doubleday Canada.
Rebecca Thomas reads a selection of her poems.
Rebecca Thomas is a Mi'kmaw poet and activist who does not want to be a poet or activist. She just happens to be good enough at poetry and persuasion to get people to listen but her ultimate goal is to make Canada a better place for her Indigenous community because so many people tend to forget they were here first. She has captained the Halifax Slam Poetry team three years in a row, taking HaliSlam to the semi finals in 2016. She has accidentally found herself as the former Poet Laureate of Halifax. She has performed with a Tribe Called Red and has spoken and lectured at conferences and coffee houses from coast to coast. She writes kids books about growing up the child of a residential school survivor. She has written for the CBC and Washington Post but has yet to make a chapbook. She pays her bills by working as the Senior Diversity Consultant for the Public Works Commission. She'll be doing some cool symphony stuff with Kitchener Waterloo Symphony and Symphony Nova Scotia but does not play a musical instrument, so we'll see how it goes! She also feels real uncomfortable writing bios about herself. She's done some other things here and there but has reached her tolerance for hearing her accomplishments listed off.
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