Honey Jam is celebrating 15 years! The event that helped launch the careers of Jully Black and Nelly Furtado is now the longest running all-female talent showcase in Canada.
And they’re getting ready to do it all again this year! Are YOU ready to audition?
Next week, The Gladstone Hotel and Granny Boots hosts the launch of this year’s Pink Ink zine. Pink Ink is a weekly creative writing drop-in facilitated by queer community artist and activist Karine Silverwoman, and a program of Supporting Our Youth.
The launch event is hosted by Karine Silverwoman and Joseph Soobram, with performances from the talented queer and trans youth whose work is featured in this year’s zine. With post-show music from Yes Yes Y’all co-founder and DJ Elle Niño, spinning hip hop, R&B, reggae, electro and ‘90s classics.
The details:
Wednesday, April 28 at 7:30pm
The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto.
Free for youth, PWYC $5-10 for adults (no one turned away for lack of funds).
All ages welcome!
For more information check out the Facebook page.
YOU ARE INVITED to an afternoon celebration of one of Canada’s bravest and most inspiring feminist fighters. Norma Scarborough was a pro-choice activist who was always at Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s side in our fight to legalize abortion in the country; plus, she was a wonderful woman.
Part of Norma’s celebration will be introducing, honouring and fundraising for the new generation of young women who are keeping the pro-choice movement strong in Canada. Norma was the head of the now defunct CARAL (Canadian Abortion Rights Action League). In its stead is the Ottawa-based Canadians for Choice, led by an amazing woman named Patricia LaRue who is not only bilingual but a young mom. She and other young pro-choice feminists, some Toronto-based, will be at the event.
All money raised at the event and during the month of April is going to the newly named Norma Scarborough Emergency Fund, founded and administered by CFC to help with the travel costs of women seeking an abortion. (Please see www.canadiansforchoice.ca for info on how you can donate.) We are thrilled that Senator Nancy Ruth has agreed to match every dollar we raise up to $7,500.
The event will include some musical performances, as well as selections from the Choice Monologues.
With Obama sacrificing abortion for the passage of his health bill and Harper’s government attempting to exclude reproductive measures as part of women’s health needs in their overseas aid packages, it really is a good time for pro-choice women to come together and remind the government and others that there was one generation of women who fought for the right to choose and there is another one ready to continue the battle.
Saturday April 17. 3-5 p.m. Koffler House, Room 108. 569 Spadina Ave. This event is FREE.
Yours truly just might be one of the monologue performers … see you there!
Busting Out is a professional theatre program for GIRLS aged 12 to 16. Its goal is to provide a forum for young women, through a series of theatre-based workshops, discussion and collective creation. The participants of the program will have the opportunity to work with professional playwrights, actors and directors on their own Writing Project, as well as a public presentation of their own creation. Professional artists will lead the girls in classes, which include playwriting, acting, improvisation and spoken word. Out is an exciting and unique program opportunity for teenage girls. CREATIVE, THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND FUN!
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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…
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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)
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Plus: Does Sex Ed teach us what we really need to know? Also: Sook-Yin Lee gets direct, the scoop on sororities, and becoming a feminist man.
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