as part of the fifth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents:
The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series, two talks and readings by:
Armand Garnet Ruffo (Kingston ON)
Lisa Jarnot (Jackson Heights NY)
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Saturday, March 28, 2014
FREE ADMISSION!
2:30pm at Pressed, 750 Gladstone Avenue, Ottawa
check the VERSeFest link for the full schedule of events!
March 24-29, 2015
Armand Garnet Ruffo was born in Chapleau, northern Ontario, with roots to the Sagamok Ojibwe First Nation and the Chapleau Fox Lake Cree First Nation. Ruffo's first collection of poetry, Opening In The Sky (1994), reveals an abiding interest in the complexities of Aboriginal identity in a multi-cultural society. His second book, the acclaimed Grey Owl: the Mystery of Archie Belaney (1997), is a creative poetic biography that further raises difficult questions about voice and identity, Aboriginal culture, human rights and the environment. Ruffo won the Archibald Lampman Poetry Award for his third collection of poetry, At Geronimo’s Grave (2001), in which he uses Geronimo’s life as a metaphor for resistance and survival. His latest writing project is the much anticipated Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird, a creative biography based on the life of the acclaimed Ojibway painter Norval Morrisseau, which will be released in the fall of 2014 through Douglas & McIntyre; The Thunderbird Poems, based on the paintings of the artist, which will appear in the spring of 2015.
In addition to writing poetry, Ruffo has written plays, short fiction and critical essays on Aboriginal literature, which continues to appear in literary periodicals and anthologies both in Canada and abroad. His numerous publication credits include editing a collection of critical essays, (Ad)addressing Our Words: Aboriginal Perspectives on Aboriginal Literatures (2001), co-authoring the “Indigenous writing “ entry for The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (2009) and co-editing the latest edition of Oxford University Press’ An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (2013).
Ruffo returned to filmmaking after making experimental ‘video-poems’ in the 1980s and 1990s, and wrote and directed a feature film about the intergenerational impact of the residential school system. Released in 2010, A Windigo Tale won Best Picture at the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, and at The Dreamspeaker’s Film Festival in Edmonton, and went on to screen internationally.
He currently teaches Aboriginal literature and creative writing at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Lisa Jarnot was born in Buffalo, New York in 1967 and studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Brown University. Since the mid-1990s she has been a resident of New York City.
She has edited two small magazines (No Trees, 1987-1990, and Troubled Surfer, 1991-1992) as well as The Poetry Project Newsletter and An Anthology of New (American) Poetry (Talisman House Publishers, 1997).
She is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: Some Other Kind of Mission (Burning Deck Press, 1996), Ring of Fire (Zoland Books, 2001 and Salt Publishers, 2003), Black Dog Songs (Flood Editions, 2003) and Night Scenes (Flood Editions, 2008). Her biography of the San Francisco poet Robert Duncan was published by the University of California Press in 2012 and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Non-Fiction, and received Honorable Mention in Literature from American Publishers Awards program. A Selected Poems was published by City Lights in May of 2013.
She currently lives in Jackson Heights, New York with her husband and daughter. She works as a teacher, writer, and freelance gardener.
