Thanks to everyone who helped us search for people to take over running Pivot once Jake exits after this season. We went into it thinking that we’d struggle to find any willing candidates and ended up with the opposite problem: several of them and no real “good” way to pick between them. We hope everyone who put their name forward keeps up with the work they’re doing now, to support and grow the community and make good spaces for bookwork.
That being said, we’re happy to tell you about the two women who will take over the series full-time as of September 2017, after a gradual hand-off of responsibilities over our Winter/Spring 2017 season.
Pivot’s new Hosts and Directors are Michelle Brown and Canisia Lubrin.
Michelle Brown works as a copywriter in Toronto. Recently longlisted for the CBC poetry prize, and shortlisted for the CV2 Young Buck poetry prize, her first chapbook came out in May with Desert Pets Press and her first full-length collection will come from Palimpsest in 2018. She read at Pivot on March 9th, 2016 with Gary Barwin and Melissa Bull.
Canisia Lubrin’s work has appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, The Puritan, Room, Prairie Fire, and The City Series Anthology (Toronto) from Frog Hollow Press. Her first colletion of poetry Voodoo Hypothesis will be out from Wolsak & Wynn in Spring, 2017. She’s also working on a novel. Canisia has an MFA from the University of Guelph and teaches writing at Humber College. She guest directed and hosted for Pivot on September 21st, 2016.
You can follow both Michelle and Canisia on Twitter, at @michelleshares and @canislau, respectively.
Pivot Readings at The Tranzac 