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Breakfast Speakers 2018

  • Breakfast Speaker January 20, 2018
  • Holiday Party December 8, 2018
  • Breakfast Speaker November 17, 2018
  • Breakfast Speaker October 27, 2018
  • Breakfast Speaker September 15, 2018
  • Members Readings July 21, 2018
  • Breakfast Speaker June 16, 2018
  • Breakfast Speaker May 19, 2017
  • Breakfast Speaker April 21, 2018
  • Breakfast Speaker March 17, 2018
  • Breakfast Speaker February 17, 2018

WEN Short Story Contest for 2020

The Third Annual Joseph Smrdelj Short Story Contest for 2020 is now complete. Our judge, Prof Leonard Rosmarin announced the winners at our Zoom Breakfast Meeting on December 12, 2020.  

Congratulations to the winners and to all of those that entered the contest. Prof Rosmarin was impressed with all of the short stories and it was difficult to select winners.

First       Ann Birch

Second   Heather Dick

Third      Michael Croucher

 

Zoom Meeting January 16, 2021

Due to Covid restrictions, Canadiana is unable to open the restaurant. For this reason, the January 16, 2021 meeting will be via Zoom. Current WEN members and those whose memberhip expired less than 6 months ago will be sent a Zoom invite on Friday, January 15. If any members require help with Zoom, please contact our webmaster Maurus Cappa or a friend who is familiar with Zoom. Our Guest Speaker will be Farzana Doctor.

 

Farzana Doctor is a writer, activist, and psychotherapist. Her ancestry is Indian, and she was born in Zambia while her family was based there for five years, before immigrating to Canada in 1971.

She became interested in community organizing as a teen (primarily environmental issues, gender violence and LGBTTTIQ rights). From 2009-18, she curated the Brockton Writers Series and has been a volunteer with The Writers’ Union of Canada and the Writers’ Trust. She currently volunteers with WeSpeakOut, a global group that is working to ban female genital cutting in her Dawoodi Bohra community.

She studied social work in the early nineties and has been a social worker ever since. She worked in a variety of community agencies and a hospital before starting part-time private practice, where she sees individuals and couples.

She has been writing all of her life but it became a more regular practice around 2000, when she began writing her first novel, Stealing Nasreen, which was published by Inanna in 2007.  Her second novel, Six Metres of Pavement, won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award and was short-listed for the 2012 Toronto Book Award. In 2017 it was voted the One Book One Brampton 2017 winner. Her third novel, All Inclusive was a Kobo 2015 and National Post Best Book of the Year.

While all her books are distinct from one another, some common themes include loss, relationships, community, healing, racism, LGBT rights, diasporic identity and feminism. She seamlessly blends strong stories with social justice issues. Her genre so far has been contemporary literary fiction, but here is usually a hint of magic realism in her stories.

She’s just completed a novel, Seven (August 2020, Dundurn), and a poetry collection. You Still Look the Same. She is currently at work on a YA novel. Farzana was recently named one of CBC Books’ “100 Writers in Canada You Need To Know Now”.  She is represented by Rachel Letofsky of CookeMcDermid.

She’s an amateur Tarot card reader and has a love of spirituality, energy psychology, hypnosis and neuroscience.

She lives with her partner and dog near the lake in Etobicoke, the traditional territory of the Haudenosauneega, Anishinabek and Huron-Wendat peoples.

Thelma Wheatley Launches New Novel

WEN member Thelma Wheatley has launched a new novel titled “Tamarind Sky”. The virtual launch took place on October 22 of this year. There is a youtube link below of her reading a chapter from this book.

If you like, you can watch and listen to Thelma Wheatley read Chapter 2 from her new book, TAMARIND SKY.

In this chapter (which is short) Selena , a white British girl living in Toronto takes her new fiancee, a dark-skinned Sri Lankan called Aidan, home to Wales to get married in her home town, Cardiff. Selena expects her mother to be happy and welcoming to Aidan, but Mother has different ideas. . .

Click here for the youtube link: https://youtu.be/SgJQRvdsBwM .

Aviva Mayers Launches “If Only I Had Known”

This is a book about options… options for treatment, management, and prevention of breast cancer outside of mainstream medicine. It is the result of the journey that Aviva Mayers took back to health, and many of her choices outside of mainstream medicine are discussed here. Aviva was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008. Like millions of women throughout the world, she initially agreed to a conventional treatment out of fear and confusion. But she began to question those choices as the treatment progressed. Following her treatment she took herself on a journey to learn about gentler, less invasive, treatments outside of conventional medicine. Aviva attributes her current state of good health to the integrative and alternative paths she ultimately followed.

The book includes interviews with patients who followed a path to recovery, much of which they attribute to alternative treatments. And it includes interviews with a range of health care practitioners working with patients with breast or other cancers. The professionals share their thoughts on mainstream treatments, discuss integrative and alternative interventions that can help with recovery, and in some cases even replace conventional treatments. The book also offers advice on how to prevent breast cancer in the first place or how to avoid a recurrence.

If Only I Had Known is essential reading for anyone diagnosed with breast cancer. It provides a unique perspective on treatments that your doctor may not tell you about. Knowing about these options could improve your life both physically and psychologically. The information contained here is also relevant to people suffering from other cancers, since many of the same inflammatory processes may contribute to their cancers. Available on Amazon or FriesenPress.

The author, Aviva Mayers, is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto. To find out more about her  new book, call (647) 282-3943, email: amayers@rogers.com, or visit her website at: www.avivamayers.com/book

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The winners of our 2020 Short Story Contest are Ann Birch, Heather Dick and Michael Croucher

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Toronto-Mississauga
January 22, 2021
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sunrise: 7:43 am
sunset: 5:16 pm
 

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