Speakeasy Reading Series - April 16

Welcome to the Speakeasy Reading Series, happening at 7 PM on March 19 at the renowned Glad Day Bookshop! The Speakeasy Reading Series is a monthly event hosted by the Guelph Creative Writing MFA Program, featuring readings from students, alumni, and community readers. All are welcome at this cozy community event!

This month, our readers are:

Claire Bailey
Chi-Leung Lee
Phillip Dwight Morgan
Natasha Ramoutar

*see bios below

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Event details:

• The reading will be online and in-person at Glad Day Bookshop at 7 p.m. We ask our audience to make a suggested donation of $10-20. All proceeds go directly to unfunded readers. If you have difficulty donating, just let us know. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
• The reading will not be recorded. Automated closed captioning will be available at Glad Day and online via Zoom. Unfortunately, they are only about 60-80% accurate.
• Attendees will also be able to e-transfer to the organizers on the night of the event.
  
  In-person information:

Doors open at 6:30 pm. Masks are mandatory when not reading or drinking. We ask attendees to refrain from using fragrances.

Glad Day Bookshop has a wheelchair-accessible washroom. Beverages (including alcohol) will be available for purchase.

Glad Day Bookshop is located at 499 Church St., Toronto, ON M4Y 2C6, and is just a short walk from Wellesley Station. Street parking is also available.

Online attendance information:

Zoom link will be emailed to registered attendees by 3:30PM on the event date. Please check your mailbox's junk mail folder if you don't receive it. The waiting room will open 10 minutes before the event starts.

To turn on live captions on Zoom:
In the meeting controls toolbar, click the Show Captions icon.

To adjust font size of live captions:
In the meeting controls toolbar, click the up arrow icon next to the Show Captions CC icon. Click Caption settings. Next to Font Size, move the slider to adjust the caption size.

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Speaker Bios:

Claire Geddes Bailey is a writer, artist, and baker based in Toronto. Their writing and artwork have been featured by Artspeak, The Polygon, CSA Space, Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Reissue.pub, SadMag, dreams comma delta, and Pack Animal, among others. They are co-curator of the cake-and-reading series Café Sprinkle, and they make cakes as @spool__oven. They are currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph.

LEE Chi-Leung (李智良) writes in the liminal space between fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in English, Chinese and Cantonese. His best-known work was an unapologetic account of his decade-long experience surviving psychiatry, A Room Without Myself (《房間》, 2008), which won the Hong Kong Book Prize and the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature. His other works include Porcelain (《白瓷》, 1999), Grass is Bluer Than the Sea (《海邊草更藍》, 2018), and Days We Cross (《渡日若渡海》, 2020). Chi-Leung was a writing fellow at the International Writing Program (Iowa, 2013) and a resident artist at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (Niigata, 2018), Eaton HK (Hong Kong, 2021), and Prenzaluer Studio (Berlin, 2024). He has taught creative writing, literature and film-related subjects at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Baptist University. He believes in the power of literature to break down borders, ignite silence, and make the trembling of the world felt.

Phillip Dwight Morgan is a Toronto-based writer, editor, journalist, and outdoor enthusiast. He currently serves as the Arts and Culture Editor for The Grind Magazine and his writing has appeared in the Walrus, Brick, Maisonneuve, CBC News, and the Huffington Post, among others. 

His poem “Fraction of the whole” was featured on CBC radio’s The Exhibitionists, hosted by Amanda Parris, and his poem “Free Trade Agreement” was runner-up in the Briarpatch Magazine’s 2017 Writing from the Margin’s Contest. Phillip was the inaugural rabble.ca Jack Layton Journalism for Change Fellow and is currently one of three playwrights in the Obsidian Theatre Company Playwrights Unit. Later this month, he will be attending the 2025 Banff Centre Playwrights Lab to workshop his ensemble play, Six Love.

Natasha Ramoutar is a writer of Indo-Guyanese descent from Toronto. Her debut collection of poetry, Bittersweet, published in 2020 by Mawenzi House, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was the editor of FEEL WAYS, an anthology of Scarborough literature. She is a senior editor with Augur Magazine and serves on the editorial board at Wolsak & Wynn. Baby Cerberus is her second poetry collection.

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Speakeasy Reading Series acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Canada through The League of Canadian Poets.

Follow us on Instagram: @speakeasyreadings

Email: speakeasyreadingseries@gmail.com