Hey everyone! I’m having a book launch in Toronto on May 6^th at 7pm at the Gladstone Hotel. We will be celebrating the publication of One Hour in Paris with an evening of entertainment featuring Elvira Kurt and live music by Pins & Needles. Freehand Books will be donating a portion of the book sales from the event to the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape.

Here is the invitation for the event. Special thanks to Stephanie Cheng for designing it.

Please come!

There’s an interesting exhibit currently on at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, which runs until April 20, called Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art. The exhibition features the work of 30 international artists (including Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, and Mona Hatoum among others) and is premised on the idea that art can be a vehicle for social change.

This looks like a great exhibit and in connection with it the WAG is hosting a two-day testimonial writing workshop facilitated by The Voices and Faces Project, a nonprofit organization based in the US. The Voices and Faces Project does phenomenal work. Using documentary film and creative writing, it empowers survivors of sexual violence to put their names and faces to their personal stories of violence. By insisting that survivors’ identities not be blotted out, by helping them break the silence so often imposed upon them, The Voices and Faces Project has the potential to shift the international discourse on sexual violence.