Happy holidays!
The Durham Art Gallery will be closed on Wednesday, December 25, 2024 and will re-open on Wednesday, January 8th, 2025.
2024 Words Aloud Special Performance Edition Event
Saturday, July 20, 2-4 pm at the Durham Art Gallery
Rocco de Giacomo
Rocco de Giacomo lives in Toronto with his wife, Lisa Keophila, a fibre artist, and his daughters, Ava and Matilda. He is a widely published poet whose work has appeared in literary journals in Canada, Australia, England, Hong Kong and the US. The author of numerous poetry chapbooks and full-length collections, his latest, Casting Out (Guernica Editions) – on the reconciliation of the author’s secular lifestyle and their deeply Evangelical upbringing – was published in April of 2023.
emcee Rebecca Diem,
Owen Sound Poet Laureate, 2024-25
Rebecca Diem writes hopeful speculative fiction and poetry. Her work can be found on Reactor and Write Magazine, and she is the author of the indie steampunk series Tales of the Captain Duke. She is currently finishing her first full-length novel and working on a postpartum poetry collection inspired by beach walks with a sleeping baby. She currently serves as Owen Sound Poet Laureate for 2024-2025. With favourite writing spots on three continents, Rebecca now calls Grey-Bruce home with her Australian composer husband and newborn daughter.
Tanis MacDonald
Tanis MacDonald (she/her) is the author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female and six other books. Straggle was awarded an Honourable Mention for the Alanna Bondar Prize, and for the Betsy Warland Between Genres Prize. Tanis has won the Open Seasons Award for Nonfiction in 2021, the Northern Ontario Writers Award for Nonfiction in 2023, and has twice been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Tanis serves as the General Editor of the Laurier Poetry Series and hosts the podcast Watershed Writers, featuring writers in the Grand River Region. Tanis is a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, situated on traditional Haudenosaunee territory. With Ariel Gordon, Tanis co-edited the special “Moving on Land” issue of The Goose (2023). New writing has recently appeared in FreeFall, CV2, Consilience, and Abridged.
John O'Neill
John O’Neill is the author of four poetry books (including The Photographer of Wolves and Criminal Mountains, both from Wolsak and Wynn) and was most recently first prize winner in the Prairie Fire/McNally Robinson Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines including The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Event, Canadian Literature, Queen’s Quarterly and Prism International, and have been nominated three times for National Magazine Awards. His novel Fatal Light Awareness appeared in 2013 (Guernica Editions) and his short story collection Goth Girls of Banff in 2020 (NeWest Press) which was shortlisted for the ReLit Award and was a finalist for both the UBC/HarperCollins Prize for Best New Fiction and the Alberta Book Publishers’ Trade Fiction Book of the Year. He and his artist wife Ann are new residents of West Grey, and are happy to be living amidst such inspiring landscapes.
Thank you to the Words Aloud Festival Committee
& special thanks to Richard Sitoski, Words Aloud Artistic Director and
Yvonne Pelletier, Words Aloud Festival Coordinator.
