The Festival of Literary Diversity
Registration
An overview of the festival schedule and speakers.
Event Details
The 2020 Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) includes over twenty literary events held virtually April 30 – May 3. A preview event, The Power and Politics of Prizes will take place on April 25, and a post-festival follow up event, Five Years of Fold will take place on May 4.
Click on the individual events of interest to register for each session of interest via Eventbrite.
Schedule
Samra Habib
Ryan McMahon
Dorothy Ellen Palmer
Rinaldo Walcott
Idil Abdillahi
Gwen Benaway
Ali Blythe
Casey Plett
Kai Cheng Thom
Jia Qing Wilson-Yang
Featured Speaker(s)
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation and lives in Vancouver. He is the author of This Wound is a World (Frontenac 2017), NDN Coping Mechanisms (House of Anansi 2019), and A History of My Brief Body (Hamish Hamilton 2020).
Billy-Ray will appear in Brunch N’ Learn: Breaking Down Poetry, The Power and Politics of Prizes, and will moderate part of the discussion in Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Casey Plett
Samra Habib
Catherine Hernandez
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Kagiso Lesego Molope has won the 2019 Ottawa Book Award and the Inaugural Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award for Excellence in African writing. Her novels are Dancing in the Dust, The Mending Season, This Book Betrays My Brother and Such a Lonely, Lovely Road.
Kagiso is hosting the Fiction Workshop with Kagiso Molope, appearing in The Power and Politics of Prizes, and moderating the discussion at the Breakfast with Perdita Felicien.
Upcoming Events
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Casey Plett
Samra Habib
Catherine Hernandez
Casey Plett
Casey Plett wrote the novel Little Fish, the short story collection A Safe Girl to Love, and co-edited the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. She is a winner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the ALA Stonewall Book Award Barbara Gittings Literature Prize, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award. She has written for The New York Times, The Walrus, McSweeney’s, Maclean’s, and Rookie, among other publications.
Casey is appearing in the Grad Track, The Power and Politics of Prizes, and The Art of Craft: Trans Brilliance Edition.
Upcoming Events
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Casey Plett
Samra Habib
Catherine Hernandez
Samra Habib
Samra Habib is a writer, photographer, and activist. Her memoir, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Memoir was a finalist for Canada Reads in 2020. As a journalist she’s covered topics ranging from fashion trends and Muslim dating apps to the rise of Islamophobia in the US. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Advocate, and her photo project, “Just Me and Allah,” has been featured in Nylon, i-D, Vanity Fair Italia, Vice, and The Washington Post.
Samra is appearing in The Power & Politics of Prizes and Reconciliation & Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Casey Plett
Samra Habib
Catherine Hernandez
Catherine Hernandez
Catherine Hernandez is the author of Scarborough (Arsenal Pulp Press). Scarborough won the 2015 Jim Wong-Chu Award, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, the Trillium Book Award, and longlisted for Canada Reads 2018. Scarborough is being adapted into a film by Compy Films, Reel Asian Film Festival and Telefilm, with Catherine authoring the screenplay. Her second book, Crosshairs will be published this September (HarperCollins Canada).
Catherine will be moderating The Power and Politics of Prizes.
Upcoming Events
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Casey Plett
Samra Habib
Catherine Hernandez
Canisia Lubrin
Teacher, editor, and critic, Canisia Lubrin has been published internationally, including translations into Spanish, Italian, and forthcoming in German and French. In 2019 she was Writer-In-Residence at Queen’s University and poetry faculty at Banff Centre. She’s received nominations for the Toronto Book Award, Journey Prize, Gerald Lampert, Pat Lowther, and others. Lubrin’s Voodoo Hypothesis was a CBC Best Book. The Dyzgraphxst (M&S) is her second book. She earned an MFA at the University of Guelph.
Canisia will facilitate Brunch N’ Learn: Breaking Down Poetry with Billy-Ray Belcourt and will appear in Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Imam Baksh
Imam Baksh is from Guyana, South America and writes tales of magic, monsters and heroes. His works feature Guyanese folklore and dialogue in his native Creole.
Imam will appear in Words Without Borders and the Grad Track.
Upcoming Events
Sheena Kamal
Sheena Kamal’s writing has been featured in The Guardian, Bustle, The Irish Times, Writer’s Digest and Entertainment Weekly. Her bestselling debut novel The Lost Ones won her a 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, a Strand Magazine Critics Award and Macavity Award for Best First Novel. The sequel It All Falls Down was called “a stunning, emotionally resonant thriller” in its Kirkus starred review. In 2020, expect her next thriller No Going Back, and her first YA novel, Fight Like A Girl.
Sheena will appear in Words Without Borders and Better Bring the Book Club.
Upcoming Events
Sandhya Menon
Sandhya Menon is the New York Times bestselling author of When Dimple Met Rishi, Of Curses and Kisses, and many other novels that also feature lots of kissing, girl power, and swoony boys. Her books have been included in several cool places, including the Today show, Teen Vogue, NPR, BuzzFeed, and Seventeen. A full-time dog servant and part-time writer, she makes her home in the foggy mountains of Colorado. Visit her online at SandhyaMenon.com.
Sandhya is the 2020 FOLD Writer-in-Residence. She will appear in Words Without Borders, the Grad Track, and Fractured Fairy Tales.
Upcoming Events
Lindsay Wong
Lindsay Wong is the author of the bestselling, award-winning memoir The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug-Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family. She has a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University, and she is now based in Vancouver, Canada. My Summer of Love and Misfortune is her first YA novel.
Lindsay will appear in Words Without Borders and What We Found.
Upcoming Events
Mahak Jain
Mahak Jain is the author of the picture book Maya, which was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, a CBC Best Book of the Year, and winner of the South Asia Book Award. Born in Delhi, Mahak came of age in four different countries. She currently resides in Toronto, where she teaches creative writing and edits books for young people.
Mahak will be moderating Words Without Borders.
Upcoming Events
Mona Awad
Mona Awad is the author of the novels Bunny and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, which won the Amazon Best First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize. Bunny was named a best book of 2019 by TIME Magazine, Vogue, CBC Books and Quill & Quire. It is a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror and is being adapted for television by AMC.
Mona will be appearing in Better Bring the Book Club and Fractured Fairy Tales.
Upcoming Events
Amanda Leduc
Amanda Leduc is the author of the non-fiction book DISFIGURED: ON FAIRY TALES, DISABILITY, AND MAKING SPACE, out now with Coach House Books. She is also the author of the novel THE MIRACLES OF ORDINARY MEN, published in 2013 by ECW Press. Her new novel, THE CENTAUR’S WIFE, is forthcoming with Random House Canada in the spring of 2021. She makes her home in Hamilton, Ontario, where she lives with a very lovable, very destructive dog and serves as the Communications Coordinator for the FOLD.
Amanda will appear in Fractured Fairy Tales and Five Years of FOLD.
Upcoming Events
Thea Lim
Thea Lim is the author of An Ocean of Minutes, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her writing has been published by Granta, The Paris Review, The Guardian and others. She grew up in Singapore and now lives with her family in Toronto, where she is a professor of creative writing.
Thea is moderating Fractured Fairytales.
Upcoming Events
Edem Awumey
Edem Awumey est né au Togo. Son premier roman Port-Mélo (Gallimard 2006) a obtenu le Grand prix de littérature de l’Afrique noire. En 2009, Les pieds sales (Boréal, Seuil), était sélectionné pour le Prix Goncourt. Descent into night, la traduction anglaise de son roman Explication de la nuit obtint en 2018 par un Prix du gouverneur général du Canada. Edem Awumey a été chargé de cours de littérature francophone à l’Université McGill.
Edem appairaîtra dans La Duel de Traduction.
Upcoming Events
Rhonda Mullins
Rhonda Mullins is a Montreal-based translator who has translated many books from French into English, including Grégoire Courtois’ The Laws of the Skies and Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette’s Suzanne. She is a seven-time finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation, winning the award in 2015. Novels she has translated have been contenders for Canada Reads and one was a finalist for the 2018 Best Translated Book Award.
Rhonda will appear in the Translation Duel/Duel de Traduction.
Upcoming Events
Wayne Grady
Wayne Grady is the author of a dozen works of nonfiction, two novels (Emancipation Day and Up From Freedom), and is also an award-winning translator of such writers as Antonine Maillet, Yves Beauchemin, and Yara El-Ghadban. He divides his time between Kingston, Ontario, and Mexico.
Wayne will appear in the Translation Duel, and will moderate Fighting Injustice with Fiction.
Upcoming Events
Ryan McMahon
Ryan McMahon is an Anishinaabe creative who talks, writes and yells for a living. McMahon’s work is squarely rooted at the intersection between the good, the bad and ugly between Indian Country and the mainstream.
Ryan will be facilitating the Podcasting Masterclass and will appear in Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Adnan Khan
Adnan Khan has written for Maisonneuve, The Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, and others. There Has To Be a Knife is his first novel.
Adnan is appearing in Better Bring the Book Club and Fighting In-Justice with Fiction.
Upcoming Events
Sonya Lalli
Sonya Lalli is a Canadian writer of Indian heritage. She studied law in her hometown of Saskatoon and at Columbia University in New York, and later completed an MA in Creative Writing and Publishing at City, University of London. Sonya loves to cook, travel and practice yoga. She lives in Toronto with her husband.
Sonya will appear in Better Bring the Book Club.
Upcoming Events
Ann Y K Choi
Ann Y.K. Choi’s novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award. She is the co-founder of The Authors’ Book Club, an initiative that aims to connect readers with authors across Canada. She lives in Toronto.
Ann is moderating Better Bring the Book Club.
Upcoming Events
Helen Knott
Helen is a Dane Zaa, Cree, and mixed Euro-descent woman from Prophet River First Nations living in Fort St. John, B.C. She has engaged in activist and artistic events across Canada, including a poetry performance at the 2017 Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Awards in Montreal. Her first book, In My Own Moccasins: A Story of Struggle & Resilience, was a national bestseller and was long listed for the RBC Taylor prize.
Helen will facilitate the Nonfiction Workshop with Helen Knott and appear in Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Helen Knott
Canisia Lubrin
Jenny Heijun Wills
Jesse Thistle
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Jenny Heijun Wills
Jenny Heijun Wills has lived, studied, and worked in Toronto, Montreal, Boston, and Seoul. Her memoir, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related won the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction. She currently teaches at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba.
Jenny is appearing in What We Found and Reconciliation & Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Helen Knott
Canisia Lubrin
Jenny Heijun Wills
Jesse Thistle
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Jesse Thistle
Jesse Thistle is Métis-Cree, from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He is an assistant professor in Métis Studies at York University in Toronto. He won a Governor General’s Academic Medal in 2016, and is a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a Vanier Scholar. Visit him on Twitter @michifman.
Jesse is appearing in the Breakfast with Jesse Thistle, What We Found, and Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Helen Knott
Canisia Lubrin
Jenny Heijun Wills
Jesse Thistle
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Dorothy Ellen Palmer
Dorothy Ellen Palmer is a disabled senior writer, accessibility advocate, retired English/Drama teacher, improv coach, and OSSTF union activist. Her work appears in: Refuse, Nothing Without Us, Wordgathering, Alt-Minds, All Lit Up, Herizons, Little Fiction Big Truths, 49th Shelf, and Open Book. Her novel, When Fenelon Falls, (Coach House, 2010), features a disabled protagonist in the Woodstock-Moonwalk summer of 1969. Her memoir, Falling for Myself, just appeared with Wolsak and Wynn.
Dorothy will appear in What We Found and Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Farzana Doctor
Farzana Doctor is the Tkaronto-based author of four novels: Stealing Nasreen, Six Metres of Pavement (which was the One Book One Brampton 2017 winner), and All Inclusive. Seven, will be released in August, 2020. She is also an activist, part-time psychotherapist and amateur tarot card reader.
Farzana will be moderating What We Found.
Upcoming Events
Rinaldo Walcott
Rinaldo Walcott is a co-author of Black Life: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom. He is a writer, critic and Professor. His work is centrally concerned with Black life across the diaspora.
Rinaldo will be appearing in Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
Idil Abdillahi
Idil Abdillahi is the co-author of Black Life: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom and an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Ryerson University.
Idil will be appearing in Reconciliation and Resistance.
Upcoming Events
D’Scribe
D’Scribe the poet is an indigenous spoken word artist currently residing in Niagara. He has competed, cried, lost and won on many slam stages around Turtle Island. Currently working on his appearance in the play “Over to you” hitting the meridian center in Niagara falls in mid December as well as a video series that will be released early February 2020. D’Scribe is loud, angry and unapologetic on stage. Offstage, though he is a giant teddy bear.
D’Scribe will appear in The Spoken Word Showcase and The Poet’s Gallery.
Upcoming Events
Desiree Mckenzie
A proud Brampton kid at heart, Des has touched many stages around the GTA. She is the co-director of the Toronto BAM! Youth Slam and 2019 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word National Champion. Poetry turns her stories of relationships, growing up and struggles with self-love as an Indo-Caribbean (queen) into tales of perseverance. She has a passion for spreading poetry through her community hoping that others find strength through stanza, by way of the soul.
Desiree will appear in The Spoken Word Showcase and The Poet’s Gallery.
Upcoming Events
Jamaal Jackson Rogers
Jamaal Jackson Rogers is an award winning poet, arts educator, creative entrepreneur, and performance artist. As a poet, he was selected to be Ottawa’s first English Poet Laureate after 27 years in which the position had gone unfilled, while his career in arts education has earned him 2016’s Ontario Arts Educator Award. His defining moments are when he makes intimate connections with his participants during workshop exchanges and performance sets.
Jamaal will appear in the Spoken Word Showcase and The Poet’s Gallery.
Upcoming Events
Sincerely Shyy
Shiann Croft is an educator, spoken word artistscreenwriter and change agent to art and culture in the GTA.The Brampton based poetess has a powerful relationship with storytelling that is ancestral and thought-provoking. Using words such as storyteller, cultural custodial and prophet of the times to describe herself, Shiann is also a brilliant educator that uses creative writing as a tool to center the experiences of black folx.
Shyy will appear in The Poet’s Gallery.
Upcoming Events
DJ Roshanie
Roshanie is a Brampton-based DJ that is known for her nostalgic and global song selections. She has shared stages with international acts and some of Canada’s most promising emerging artists. Beyond the DJ booth, Roshanie is a resident host on ISO Radio, a community radio station broadcasting live from Central Toronto. She is also the founder of feminist educational initiative, Solidarity in Sound, which works toward gender equity in music.
Upcoming Events
Gwen Benaway
Gwen Benaway is a trans girl of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has published three collections of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead, Passage, and Holy Wild, and was the editor for an anthology of fantasy short stories, Maiden Mother and Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes. Her writing has been critically acclaimed and widely published in Canada. She was a finalist for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ writers from the Writer’s Trust of Canada, the Lambda Literary Award for Trans Poetry, and the National Magazine Awards and Digital Publishing Awards for her personal essay, A Body Like A Home. Her fourth collection of poetry, Aperture, is forthcoming from Book*hug in Spring 2020. She is also currently editing a book of creative non-fiction, trans girl in love, forthcoming from Strange Light in 2020. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is a Ph.D student at the University of Toronto in the Women and Gender Studies Institute.
Gwen is appearing in The Art of Craft: Trans Brilliance Edition.
Upcoming Events
Ali Blythe
Ali Blythe is author of two critically acclaimed books exploring trans-poetics: Twoism and Hymnswitch. A Quill & Quire starred review said “Blythe delivers taut yet expansive hymns from ‘the golden-throated era / of the hormone’” and the Puritan said it’s “exciting to see a writer so conscious of building a body of work within and across collections, pursuing not just a set of ideas and concerns but an artistic vision.” His poems and essays are published in Canada, England, Germany and Slovenia.
Ali is appearing in The Art of Craft: Trans Brilliance Edition.
Upcoming Events
Kai Cheng Thom
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performer, lasagna lover and wicked witch based in Toronto, unceded Indigenous territory. She is the author of several award-winning works, including the poetry collection a place called No Homeland, the children’s book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, and the forthcoming essay collection I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE: A Trans Girl’s Notes From the End of the World.
Upcoming Events
Jia Qing Wilson-Yang
Jiaqing Wilson-Yang is a Toronto based writer. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, Carte Blanche, Maisonneuve, Ricepaper Magazine, and Poetry is Dead. Her novel, Small Beauty, won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction and received an Honour of Distinction from the Writer’s Trust of Canada.
Jia will be moderating The Art of Creaft: Trans Brilliance Edition.
Upcoming Events
Danny Ramadan
Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker and storyteller. His debut novel, The Clothesline Swing, continues to receive praise and awards and is translated to multiple languages. His children book, Salma the Syrian Chef, is out in March 2020.
Danny will appear in Fighting Injustice with Fiction.
Upcoming Events
Makambe Simamba
Makambe K Simamba is a Dora Mavor Award winning playwright and actor, whose work includes Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers, and Little Brothers, A Chitenge Story, and The Drum Major Instinct. She works consistently in theatre, as well as in film/TV. Makambe is a proud Zambian, and she is thrilled to serve her community though her ability to tell stories.
Makambe will perform the Opening Gala Theatre Performance of Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers.
Upcoming Events
Jael Richardson
Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. The Stone Thrower was adapted into a children’s book in 2016 and was shortlisted for a Canadian picture book award. Richardson is also a book columnist and guest host on CBC’s q. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and lives in Brampton, Ontario where she founded and serves as the Artistic Director for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD). Her debut novel, Gutter Child, is coming Winter 2021 with HarperCollins Canada.
Upcoming Events
Steven Beattie
Steven W. Beattie is reviews editor at Quill & Quire magazine. He lives in Toronto.
Steven will be moderating Five Years of FOLD.
Upcoming Events
Opening Gala
Each year, the opening gala highlights important discussions and topics. This year’s gala will celebrate the first five years of the festival. Authors and topics will be revealed March 2020.
