As you may have heard, Toronto’s Women Bookstore is in danger of closing its doors. A number of fundraisers have been arranged to help out…
(more inside…)

AQSAzine, a grassroots zine for 16-35 year-old women and trans people who identify as Muslim, is launching its second issue at a free event hosted in partnership with The AGO Youth Council. The event is also a launch for Making Noise! Muslim women and trans people video project, and Jasmine Magazine, the first Palestinian Magazine in Toronto.

Making Noise! is an exciting hands-on media arts training that addresses the invisibility and negative portrayals of young Muslim women and trans people in the media, supported by the Urban Alliance on Race Relations.

The event will showcase videos, visual art, and readings by Azza Abbaro, Shadi Eskandani, Sidrah Ladin, Sara Mir, Samira Mohyeddin, Shara Mohammed, Golie Moulaie, and Sahar Rizi.

Musical performances by Farheen Beg & Arun Chaudhuri and Tanya Jacobs.

Dance performance by Raja Jalebi and Sheesha YaDil.

Plus: silk screening and zine-making workshops.

This event is part of the 16 Days to THRIVE! Challenging Violence Against Racialized Women and Our Communities.

Friday Dec. 4th, 6-8 p.m.
Art Gallery of Ontario
Anne Tannenbaum Gallery School
317 Dundas Street W., Toronto

We’re having a fundraiser for Shameless Wire in Toronto on November 11th. Come out and support our new journalism training series for teen girls, or just come for a night of free entertainment from some awesome Toronto writers!

Featuring Zoe Whittall, Dianah Smith, Karine Silverwoman and Stacey May Fowles, music from DJ Winnie, and some great door prizes!

Granny Boots presents Shameless Wire Fundraiser
The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. W., Toronto.
November 11th. Doors at 7pm, show 7.30pm. FREE.
Click here to RSVP on Facebook.

(Granny Boots is free weekly queer-friendly entertainment hosted by the Gladstone Hotel and Chelsey Licht-a-Womyn.)

We here at Shameless are big fans of the Parkdale Street Writers, a fantastic forum for youth writers (some of which we’ve been very lucky to reprint in the magazine). And a new set of workshops are about to begin. In addition to workshops with some amazing Toronto artists, participants get to try their hand at a wide range of creative writing, including comics, lyrics, poetry, video narratives and storytelling.

Full deets from PSW co-ordinator Emily Pohl-Weary:

Are you 16-25 years old? Do you keep a blog or journal? Constantly update your Facebook page? Write super-long e-mails? Make up stories, films, rants, video game ideas, lyrics and/or poems in your head? Love to read and talk about books?

Why not join the…

Parkdale Street Writers

Free writing workshops led by kick-ass local authors, comics creators, hip hop poets and street artists in Toronto’s west-end.(more inside…)

One more thing to get excited about for the upcoming weekend: Angela Davis, activist, writer and professor, is speaking at McGill University this Thursday about the case of Oscar Grant, a young black man who was shot and killed by transit police in California on New Year’s Day 2009.

Aaaaand… Davis is going to be interviewed on my radio show earlier that day! Tune into Venus on CKUT 90.3 FM (you can listen online as well, just follow the directions on the website) around 1:30 this Thursday the 1st. This is a great opportunity to hear an activist icon being interviewed in a non-mainstream- media setting. You can bet you’ll hear questions and answers you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

An activist poster of Davis from the 1970s(?)

From the Media@McGill press release:

“Oscar Grant was a young Black man returning home by way of the Fruitvale BART station after celebrating the New Year. This was the only excuse the cop needed to end Grant’s life execution-style. Maybe Oscar was too loud, too proud, too Black. Maybe he was too calm during the taunts of the police. Or maybe it was for nothing at all.”

Coming only days before the inauguration of Barack Obama – as the world’s media was proclaiming the dawn of a new “post-racial America” – the case of Oscar Grant demonstrated the depth and complexity of the relationship between media, race and power.

Renowned human rights activist Angela Davis will reflect on this issue in a Media@McGill / Beaverbrook public lecture entitled “Media, Race and Power: The Case of Oscar Grant”.

Angela Davis is an American political activist and university professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Today, Davis continues to work for racial and gender equality, gay rights, and prison abolition and is a popular public speaker, nationally and internationally.

Thursday, October 1, 2009 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Room 132, Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec

My hometown is all abuzz with excitement for the upcoming Pop Montreal music festival, and I’m happy to say that with a lineup of some of the most impressive female performers around, it gets the Venus seal of approval. Full schedule is available on the website, but I’m giving some of my top recommendations here - check the website for times and locations. One cool thing is that if you can’t afford the often-steep ticket prices for some of the bigger names, you can see many of the artists speaking on panels, keynotes, and symposia for free, and if you bring a tiny mp3 player with you and squint it’s like getting a backstage pass to their show.

The Heavy Hitters
Diamanda Galas: HIV/AIDS activist and OG (original goth) with a 3.5-octave range, not only is she performing but she’s giving a keynote address on the relationship between art and epidemics.
Buffy Ste. Marie: Whether she’s breaking your heart with her voice or breastfeeding her baby on Sesame Street, the iconic singer/songwriter is not to be missed.
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks: Despite claiming to hate most punk rock, Lydia Lunch is about the punkest lady ever. It seems unbelievable that her 1970s band is coming together again to play a show with Montreal art punks AIDS Wolf and Duchess Says, but I guess fairy godmothers really do exist.
Fever Ray: The female half of Swedish band The Knife (remember that song that you danced to for all of Summer 2007?) is known for the visual feastiness of her live shows, as if her haunting songs aren’t enough on their own. Check out the video for When I Grow Up from her self-titled 2009 album.

Under The Radar (but not for long)
(more inside…)

If you’re in Toronto this month, you may want to head over to the North York Central Library to check out artist Karen Miranda Augustine’s new exhibition “AMERICAN EMPRESS: Credit for the Empire’s Troubled Royalty.”

“From Tonya Harding to Lauryn Hill to Amy Fisher, AMERICAN EMPRESS: Credit for the Empire’s Troubled Royalty is a solo exhibition that explores adversity as a rite of passage. Presented as a series of mixed-media paintings, contemporary pop culture figures are transformed into a series of credit card portraits that speak to far-reaching, everyday human concerns: the transcendence of loss, social stigma, mental illness, addiction and personal crisis.”

Exhibition runs: September 3rd - 27th, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 3rd, 6:00 to 8:30 p.m.

North York Central Library
5120 Yonge Street
2nd Floor
Toronto, Ontario

ARTIST SITE: http://KarenMirandaAugustine.com
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: http://KMAugustineNews.blogspot.com

For more about Karen Miranda Augustine, make sure to check out my interview with her for next week’s Shameless Women post.

Sex Workers Vs. The Media
Short films by sex workers from Canada and abroad about the media

Wednesday July 15, 7 pm screening
The 519 Community Centre, main floor
Tickets $8-12 sliding scale, available at the door
Free for sex workers

Wheelchair accessible

The drug addicted sex worker on the street, the high class escort, the
trafficked Thai woman…

The media is always telling stories about sex workers—but what do sex workers think about the media? More and more sex workers both in Canada and abroad are creating media that reflects the realities, joys, complexities, humour and pathos of this incredibly diverse industry—and rejecting or satirizing the stereotypes we’re abundantly familiar with. Come here the stories sex workers flip the lens to reflect on themselves and the media itself.

This evening of short films from the US, Cambodia, India and Canada includes the Canadian premiere of In Our Image, a short documentary about the making of the sex worker run $pread magazine. These screenings will be followed by an audience discussion moderated by Kara Gillies, sex worker, activist and organizer of nearly 20 years.

Organizer: Juliet November; Sponsors: $pread Magazine, Good For Her, Maggie’s; Curatorial assistance: San Francisco Sex Worker Film, Art and Music festival

The 2009 Scream Literary Festival Presents
Youth These Days: The Scream Youth Workshop
Sunday, July 12th, 2009 – 1 pm
The Loop Studio at Wychwood Barns
601 Christie Street, Toronto
Cost: PWYC

The book may be dead, but words aren’t. What’s old is new again —
narrative hip hop music is a dynamic occurrence of a thriving oral
literary tradition. Led by hip hop artist Paul Sackichand and professional
storyteller Rico Rodriguez, the Scream’s youth workshop provides an
opportunity to learn how to add suspense to your rhymes and rhythm to your
stories—participants will get to create, as well as perform, their own
narrative raps.