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Learn about the ekphrasis poetry writing tradition with a hands-on workshop led by Writer-in-Residence Michael Mirolla. Refreshments served.
Centered on the ‘BLACK PRAIRIES’ exhibition featured Dunlop Art Gallery, Central Library.
Includes a gallery tour by Wendy Peart, Curator of Education and Community Outreach.
About Michael Mirolla: The author of more than two dozen novels, plays, film scripts, and short story and poetry collections, Michael Mirolla’s publications include a novella, The Last News Vendor, winner of the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award, as well as three Bressani Prizes: the novel Berlin; the poetry collection The House on 14th Avenue; and the short story collection Lessons in Relationship Dyads. His latest poetry collection, At the End of the World, was short-listed for the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award and took second prize for the Di Cicco Poetry Award. His latest short story collection Becker’s Universe & Other Stories was published in the spring of 2024 (Black Moss Press). In the fall of 2019, Michael served a three-month writers residency at the Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver where he worked on the first draft of a novel, The Second Law of Thermodynamics. A symposium on Michael’s writing was held in Toronto on May 25, 2023. In September of 2023, Michael took part in a writers residency in Olot, Catalonia. While there, he polished a novella, How About This …?, which is scheduled for publication in September 2025 (At Bay Press). In July 2024, Michael participated in a month-long writers residency in Barcelona.
Apart from his writing, Michael works as an editor and is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Guernica Editions, a Canadian literary book publisher. Born in Italy and growing up in Montreal, with side trips to Glen Robertson (ON), Gboko (Nigeria), Mount Forest (ON), Toronto, Oakville and Hamilton, Michael now makes his home outside the town of Gananoque in the Thousand Islands area of Ontario.
If you'd like to book a one on one appointment with Michael outside of this time, please email wir@reginalibrary.ca or call 306-777-6202.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Learn and Personal Interest | Dunlop Art Gallery Exhibitions | Books and Storytelling | Art and Creation |
TAGS: | Writing and Publishing | Dunlop Art Gallery | Art |
Christina Battle, William “Billy” Beal, Anna Binta Diallo, Cheryl Foggo, Judah Iyunade, Richard Allan Thomas, Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, NASRA, Frank B. Jamerson fonds
BLACK PRAIRIES honours more than one hundred years of Black/African-Canadian cultural production in the Prairies, spanning the 1920s to the present, with a focus on lens-based media. The exhibition includes newly commissioned contemporary artwork, original glass plate negatives by early 1900s Black Manitoban photographer William “Billy” Beal, and archival photographs from the City of Edmonton’s Frank B. Jamerson fonds.
Beal’s glass plate negatives, taken between 1915 and 1925, document homesteading life in western Manitoba from the perspective of a lone Black man living in an all-white rural township during the early 1900s. Meanwhile, the photographs in the Frank B. Jamerson fonds, created by unnamed photographers, depict everyday Black life in and around Amber Valley, Alberta—a historic community formed during the Great Black Migration of 1910. This migration saw African-Americans fleeing racial violence in the United States to seek refuge in the Canadian Prairies. The selected photographs in this exhibition capture the first thirty years after the migration, reflecting the experiences of the first generation of Black migrants in the region. The contemporary artists in this exhibition foster important dialogues about personal histories, a changing climate, and collective experiences in the region.
Additionally, the exhibition includes the newly created short film For Caesar by filmmaker Cheryl Foggo. The film features Leander Lane, the great-grandson of Julius Caesar Lane, a founding member of the Shiloh People, the historic African-Canadian community in Saskatchewan.
BLACK PRAIRIES provides space for communal grounding and reflection on the ongoing and ever-expanding continuum of Black life and Black cultural production in the Prairies.
Image: Rosa and Mary, Amber Valley, Alberta c. 1940, black and white photograph, 5 x 6 cm. Frank B. Jamerson fonds, courtesy City of Edmonton Archives.
