The Factory Reading Series, September 28, 2025: O'Reilly, Lithgow + Ladouceur,

The Factory Reading Series Presents:
readings by:

Nathanael O'Reilly (Texas)
Michael Lithgow (Ottawa)
+
Ben Ladouceur (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Doors 7pm / Reading 7:30pm
Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa

Nathanael O’Reilly’s [pictured] fourteen poetry collections include Separation Blues: Poems 1994-2024 (Flying Islands Books, 2024), Dublin Wandering (Recent Work Press, 2024), Landmarks (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024), Selected Poems of Ned Kelly (Downingfield Press, 2024) and Boulevard (Downingfield Press, 2024), as well as three chapbooks with above/ground press. His work appears in journals and anthologies published in fifteen countries, including Cordite, The Honest Ulsterman, Meanjin, New World Writing Quarterly, Rabbit, Southword, Trasna and Westerly. He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Michael Lithgow’s poetry, fiction and academic writing have appeared in various Canadian and international journals including TNQ, the Literary Review of Canada (LRC), Topia, The /Temz/ Review, Canadian Literature, Existere, The Antigonish Review, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, ARC and Fiddlehead. He has authored two collections of poetry Waking in the Tree House (Cormorant Books, 2012) and Who We Thought We Were As We Fell (Cormorant Books, 2021). His short story ‘The Taxidermy Lesson’ was recently published in The Brussels Review. He teaches at Athabasca University.

Ben Ladouceur has received the Thomas Morton for Fiction, the National Magazine Award (Gold) for Poetry, the Archibald Lampman Award, the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, and a writer’s residency at the Al Purdy A-Frame. He is the author of the novel I Remember Lights (2025), the poetry collections Otter (2015) and Mad Long Emotion (2019), and ten chapbooks, including the above/ground press titles Lime Kiln Quay Road (2011; second printing, 2014) which was nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, and The Last Man (2025), produced as part of his upcoming tenure as University of Ottawa’s new writer-in-residence. He lives in Ottawa.

The Factory Reading Series, August 21, 2025: Currin, Heinis, JAAWORD + Pirie,

The Factory Reading Series Presents:
readings by:

Jen Currin (Vancouver)
Shery Alexander Heinis (Ottawa)
Jamaal Amir Akbari/JAAWORD (Ottawa)
Pearl Pirie (QC)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Doors 7pm / Reading 7:30pm
Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa

Jen Currin has published two collections of stories, Disembark (House of Anansi, 2024) and Hider/Seeker (Anvil Press, 2018), which was a finalist for a ReLit Award and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book. They have also published five collections of poetry, including Trinity Street (House of Anansi, 2023) and The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010), which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for a LAMBDA and two other awards. Currin lives on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Halkomelem-speaking peoples, including the Qayqayt, Musqueam, Kwikwetlem, and Kwantlen Nations, in New Westminster, BC. They teach creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Shery Alexander Heinis is a St. Lucia born poet, writer, and former diplomat. She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of In Our Tongues Reading and Art Series, an Ottawa-based arts non-profit that showcases, nurtures, and advances Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists from the National Capital Region and across Canada. She is the author of A Greater Whole, as well as her debut poetry collection, Splinter (self-published). Her work has appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine, The League of Canadian Poets’ Black History Month Chapbook, These Lands, Bywords, In\Words and more. She has been a feature reader at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, VERSeFest Ottawa and The Tree Reading Series among others. Shery is featured in BREATH, a multimedia immersive art installation and the documentary film FOUR WOMEN  on Bell Fibe TV1 and CBC Gem. 

Jamaal Amir Akbari or JAAWORD [pictured] is an award winning poet, songwriter, recording, screen and performance artist, arts educator and creative entrepreneur.  He is Ottawa’s 2017-2019 Poet Laureate Emeritus, and his career in arts education earned him 2016's Ontario Arts Educator Award.

He has brought his work to audiences nationally and abroad, and served as Carleton University’s Artist in Residence for the 2019-2020 school year. He also founded the Origin Arts & Community Centre in 2015, a performance arts hub on the edge of Ottawa’s Hintonburg neighbourhood that provides an event space for performing artists to share their passion. 

His topics range from emotional maturity to black heritage, from parenting to the human condition. He resides in rural Marathon Village, ON, with his wife and 8 children, using the national capital region as his launch pad to teach, mentor and advocate for the arts.

Pearl Pirie lives quietly & slowly in rural Quebec and Ottawa. Her latest is we astronauts from Pinhole Poetry. www.pearlpirie.com
 

The Factory Reading Series, March 16, 2025: Etcheverry, Manery, mclennan, Turnbull + Wilkins,

The Factory Reading Series Presents:
readings by:

Jorge Etcheverry Arcaya (Ottawa)
Rob Manery (Vancouver)
rob mclennan (Ottawa)
Chris Turnbull (Kemptville)
+
Grant Wilkins (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Doors 7pm / Reading 7:30pm
Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa

Jorge Etcheverry Arcaya, Chilean-Canadian poet, lives in Ottawa, Canada. Professor of philosophy, master's degree in Hispanic language and literature, doctor in comparative literature. He was a member of the Escuela de Santiago and Grupo América, Chilean poetic groups of the 1960s-70s. His poetry, prose and criticism have been published in various countries in magazines and books in Spanish and translations into English, French, Italian and Portuguese. He has published art in various media and formats, on paper and virtually. His latest books are Clorodiaxepóxido, poems, Chile, 2017; Los herederos, science fiction novel, 2018; Canadografia, anthology of Spanish-Canadian prose, Chile, 2017; Samarkanda, poems, Canada, 2019; Outsiders, narratives in English, 2020; Orejas y vanguardias, Chile, 2024. Recently appears in the anthologies Wurlitzer, cantantes del recuerdo en la poesía chilena, Chile, 2018; Antología de la Revista Entre Paréntesis Chile, 2018; Antología de la poesía chilena de la última década, (Chile, 2018), Antología mundial: la papa, seguridad alimentaria (Bolivia, 2019), Bolivia, 2019; Anthologie de la poésie chilienne, 26 poètes d'aujourd'hui (France 2021). He is a collaborator and member of the editorial committee of Entreparéntesis magazine, from Chile, and Off the Record magazine, also Chilean. His latest book of poems is Orejas y vanguardias, Chile, 2024.

Robert Manery lives in Vancouver, BC, where he is the editor of Some, a print-only poetry magazine. He is the author of As They Say (BlazeVOX, 2024), It’s Not As If It Hasn’t Been Said Before (Tsunami Editions, 2001), and the chapbooks Richter-Rauzer Variations (above/ground press, 2012), Many, Not Any (Some Books, 2019), and Elegies (above/ground press, 2022).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. His latest collection is Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025).

Chris Turnbull's recent book is cipher (Beautiful Outlaw Press 2024). Her most recent chapbook is x° (Gap Riot Press). She curates a footpress, rout/e, whereby poetry can be found on trails or their pieces found on trails.

Grant Wilkins is an occasional poet, printer and papermaker who has made a practice of doing strange things to other people’s words. He has degrees in History & Classical Civilization and in English, and he’s working on another one in Art History. He lives in Ottawa on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.

collage by Gary Barwin,