ann y.k. choi
Toronto-based author and educator
Celebrating 20 years of gritLIT!
Posted on April 28, 2024
For 2o years, gritLIT has welcomed readers, authors, and publishing professionals to the City of Hamilton.
Established in 2004 by Hamilton author Krista Foss, it started as a small festival at the Staircase Theatre. Since then, the festival has grown and welcomed over 500 writers from across Canada, including hundreds of debut authors.
I’ve been happy to serve as a program advisor since 2018.
Lots of smiles! I was especially happy to introduce aspiring writers with some of their favourite authors who attended this year’s festival.
Great to catch up with Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio, Brent van Staalduinen, Jamie Tennant, Jessica Westhead, Kerry Clare, January Rogers, and Chyx. Wonderful to meet Kai Cheng Thom, Scarlett Gillespie, Paige Maylott, Casey Plett, Conyer Clayton, Shelly Kawaja, Canisia Lubrin, and Alicia Elliott.
Delighted to host two events this year, including “And So, It Starts” with authors Shelly Kawaja (The Raw Light of Morning) and Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio (Reuniting with Strangers).
“Drafts & Drafts” with Brent van Staalduinen (moderator), Anuja Varghese (Chrysalis), Nathan Whitlock (Lump), and Amy Jones (Pebble and Dove).
Photo 1: “Words Collide” with January Rogers (moderator), Adriana Chartrand (An Ordinary Violence), and Alicia Elliott (And Then She Fell). Photo 2: “Falling Short” with Carleigh Baker (moderator), Vincent Anioke (Perfect Little Angels), and Jessica Westhead (Avalanche).
I seem to like taking photos of authors signing their books!
Top left to right: Ayomide Bayowa (Gills), Adriana Chartrand (An Ordinary Violence), Alicia Elliott (And Then She Fell), Casey Plett (On Community).
Bottom left to right: Vincent Anioke (Perfect Little Angels), Gary Barwin (Imagining, Imagining), Kai Cheng Thom (Falling Back in Love with Being Human), Paige Maylott (My Body Is Distant).
Jennilee delivered a great workshop on social media for writers. Love this slide that reads: “Never stop whatever you’re doing in the real world in order to post about it… No content is more important than being present.” Wonderful advice!
A huge thanks to festival regulars and everyone behind the scenes! Jennifer Gilles, Artistic Director, I still need a photo of you! A special thanks to Jessica Rose, interim Artistic Director, for helping make this year’s festival so memorable! Learn more about the amazing gritLIT team by visiting gritLIT’s website.
List of 2024 Festival Authors
Ainara Alleyne | Vincent Anioke | Margaret Atwood | Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio | Gary Barwin | Ayomide Bayowa | Adriana Chartrand | Conyer Clayton | Alicia Elliott | Madison Farkas | Amy Jones | Shelly Kawaja | Dannabang Kuwabong | David Neil Lee | Robin Lefler | Canisia Lubrin | Peter Mansbridge | George Matuvi | Paige Maylott | Shani Mootoo | Matthew R. Morris | Geoffrey D. Morrison | Lishai Peel | Casey Plett | Leanne Toshiko Simpson | Kai Cheng Thom | Anuja Varghese | Jessica Westhead | Nathan Whitlock | Tom Wilson
List of 2024 Festival Moderators
Elamin Abdelmahmoud | Carleigh Baker | Gary Barwin | Ann Y.K. Choi | Kerry Clare | Megan Divecha | Renata Hall | Mary Francis Moore | Casey Plett | January Rogers | Emily Sattler | Neil Smith | Jamie Tennant | Kai Cheng Thom | Brent van Staalduinen
See author and moderator bios.
Click on the program cover to see inside.
Also, a shout-out to Epic Books, the festival’s official bookseller.
See you next year, everyone!
Learn more about gritLIT: Official website | Facebook | Instagram
“gritLIT is 20 in 2024” by Hamilton City Magazine | “Peter Mansbridge, Tom Wilson, Paige Maylott among writers celebrating 20 years of Hamilton Gritlit festival” via CBC.ca | “Former CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge kicks off 20th annual Hamilton gritLIT festival” by the Hamilton Spectator | “Hamilton’s GritLIT Festival celebrating 20 years with workshops, special guests and more” via CHCH.com
The boy ate an apple
Posted on May 26, 2013
One of my goals this year was to read books by writers of Asian heritage, or to read more stories with protagonists of diverse backgrounds. I regret that growing up and all through these years, I haven’t made it a priority to expose myself to stories told in multicultural voices.
Through high school, university, and college curriculums, I have been exposed to a wealth of brilliant writers, from Chaucer to Hemingway, and many Canadian writers in between. I didn’t even stop to consider that all the stories I read were told from a Western perspective. This has had an interesting impact on me as a reader and now as a writer. I assume every character I read about is white unless told otherwise. I’m not alone. When I wrote ‘The boy ate an apple’ on the chalkboard and asked a classroom full of students, “What ethnicity was that boy?” All of them, even the black and Asian students responded, “white”.
As Canadian educators, writers, and readers, we need to do a better job of promoting diverse voices and experiences. It is 2013, yet the reading lists for Independent Study Projects in senior English classes haven’t changed much since the 80s when I was in high school. To throw in the odd book by a black or Asian writer to “modernize and update” the list isn’t enough.
Recommended Read:
Requiem by Frances Itani
I recently finished Frances Itani’s Requiem, a story about Bin, a Japanese Canadian struggling with loss on many levels. Although set in 1997, the story takes readers back to 1942, a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Twenty-two thousand Japanese Canadians in British Columbia were interned, in what is one of Canada’s darkest periods in history.
ann y.k. choi 