This is our final update on this month-long festival celebrating the written word.

To experience the Niagara Literary Arts Festival check out the list below of upcoming events that you can indulge in. We will have a post once a week with the events in the seven days ahead that you can experience:

Friday, June 28th

7:30pm
St Catharines SLAM
With the Niagara Literary Arts Festival
present
The SLAMMER’s BALL
Taking place before a special St Catharines SLAM
@MahTay Café
241 St. Paul Street, St. Catharines
$5 cover

The SLAMMER’s BALL will feature the top winners of the previous four-week GRAND SLAM, for their chance to showcase their skill.

Saturday, June 29th

7:00pm
Niagara Literary Arts Festival Finale
@MahTay Café
A BookThug night
Featuring
Bill Bissett with Shannon Maguire, Mark Goldstein, Christine McNair, Beatriz Hausner, David Dowker and Jay MillAr

About the Author: Bill Bissett opened Canadian poetry to postmodernism and from there proceeded in every direction all at once. Since his invention of the Blewointment press in 1963, Bissett has worked diligently to explode all boundaries of author, text, and context, radically disrupting static and disciplinary modes of art making. Read, taught, studied, and imitated all around the world, he now lives in Toronto, painting and writing somewhere between painting and poetry.

About the Author: Shannon Maguire grew up on the mouth of Lake Superior and now lives in Guelph Ontario. Her poetry has appeared in CV2, Ditch, Gultch: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose (2009), as well as other places. She is the author of three chapbooks: Vowel Wolves & Other Knots (2011), Fruit Machine (2012), and A Web of Holes (2012). A selection of poems from Fur(l) Parachute was a finalist for the Manitoba Magazine Awards in the category of Best Poem or Suite of Poems (2012) and it was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry (2011).

About the Author: Toronto writer Mark Goldstein is the author of three books of poetry published by the award-winning BookThug: Form of Forms (2012); Tracelanguage (2010); and After Rilke (2008). His poetry and criticism have also appeared in periodicals such as Matrix Magazine and Jacket2. He has taught transtranslation workshops at the Toronto New School of Writing, SUNY Albany and lectured on translation in Paris at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Before becoming a full-time writer, Goldstein played drums alongside Leslie Feist and Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning in the indie rock band By Divine Right.

About the Author: Christine McNair’s work has appeared in sundry literary journals including CV2, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, Arc, Descant, and Poetry is Dead. She won second prize in the Atlantic Canadian Writing Competition, an honourable mention in the Eden Mills Literary Competition, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She is one of the hosts of CKCU’s Literary Landscapes program and works as a book conservator in Ottawa. Conflict is her first book.

About the Author: Beatriz Hausner started writing about Raccoon long before it was established that Toronto was host to the largest population of raccoons in the world. Hausner has written about other creatures also, mostly in verse, which she has published as poetry collections and chapbooks. When not writing or translating surrealist literature, she edits journals, publishes books for others and works full-time as a public librarian in Toronto.

David Dowker was born in Kingston, Ontario but has lived most of his life in Toronto. He is/was editor of the Alterran Poetry Assemblage.

Sunday June 30th

7:00pm-8:00pm
“Poets in the Park” Sunday Series

Join us live, or wait for the video to be posted to the Hearthside Hearings YouTube channel. The Poet in the Park Sunday Series is presented by the Niagara Literary Arts Festival and will feature recorded readings in various parks and conservation areas across the beautiful Niagara Region.