Some of the province's brightest young writers were at the
All five of those doing readings were past winners or nominees for the Trillium Awards, a provincial literary award that recognizes and promotes Ontario writers, both fiction and poetry. It that carries a $20,000 prize for winners and $2,000 for the work's publisher.
Those on hand included University of
Anand's poetry connects heavily with her work as an environmental scientist.
"A lot of scientific terminology, concepts and facts," she said before reading her work, including the poem We're Not Worried.
"Astronauts wanted neapolitan for their trips to the moon.
Freeze-dried prototypes proved impractical. Crumbs were dangerous to microgravity, like bird parts in plane engines.
Now they sell it at the NASA gift shop, so we can all travel to outer space too."
One of her poems was written using the formula of taking 13 scientific articles and using only the words in it to create a poem.
Others doing readings Thursday included Kevin Hardcastle, whose collection of short stories Debris won a 2016 Trillium Award, Kevin Connolly reading from drift, Pasha Malla reading from his former 2009 Trillium winner The Withdrawal Method and former winning poet Jeff Latosic, reading from Tiny, Frantic, Stronger.
Hardcastle's read from his story Montana Border, a gritty tale of a battered bar prize fighter in love and in trouble.
"In the side lot to the place, he met his bookie.
The man was tall and had a nasty kind of skinniness about him. He gave Daniel his winnings and they were plenty. Not a dollar had been skimmed.
"That fella's brothers are looking for you," the bookie said. "I'd clear out of town."
Daniel nodded and the man put out his hand. Knobbled joints there and the digits far too long.
Daniel shook it quick and left the lot. Twenty feet from his truck he turned and there were three bikers trailing him in their leather cuts."
Latosic took time to talk about how important literary prizes such as the Trillium Awards are for emerging writers, particularly poets.
"Dedicating your life to writing something like poetry has always been a bold and unreasonable proposition in and in today's climate it seems improbable as well," Latosic said.
"It's good to have things help you do that. Winning the award was the biggest push for me," he said.
