arts

Katherena Vermette sits hunched over the café table, a long rope of cursive writing trailing from her pen, filling the page. Coffee and a waffle grow cold beside her. It is morning—before her day job begins—and the words are flowing, as they have since she was a child living in North End Winnipeg.

It was a surprising side effect from the chemotherapy Bif Naked experienced during her treatment for breast cancer. Spending time with other women who were sharing her cancer experience clarified something for her.

“I realized how isolating my job was for all those years. It’s like being Rapunzel in the tower. Really and truly, you never meet other women and get to interact.”

If you don’t read fantasy and science fiction because you think it’s all about heroic loner dudes saving the world—run, don’t walk, to Nalo Hopkinson’s books.

One of the most original, intelligent, imaginative and ambitious voices in fiction today, Hopkinson writes formidable yet playful tales that are masterful meditations on current and future society. Her female protagonists, often marginalized, act as change agents while operating within a strongly rooted family network.

KC Adams stood before her father and wept. Despite what had been a thriving career as a visual artist, she had no exhibitions scheduled for the future. She had no ideas for new work. She feared that there was nothing left for her to do or say. She was in a deep depression and truly believed her career was over.

Tanya Tagaq and her music are genre-defying.

But, then again, that’s what makes them both so great. Tagaq is great because she’s talented, real, warm, funny and not above using a few well-placed curses for emphasis when needed.

The fact that her music is great was recognized in September, when her latest album, Animus, won the Polaris Music Prize. For the Inuit throat-singer, winning the Polaris wasn’t as much mind-blowing as it was validating.

It’s one of the first warm nights of spring, and the venerable queer venue is shaking with laughter at a stand-up comedy show headlined by young women comedians.  Avery Edison strolls onstage, with her small round glasses and short red Sinead O’Connor-style hair, and the mixed-gender, mostly 20-something audience welcomes the young British comic with the same polite applause it gave to the five young women who performed before her. Not long into her set, Edison comes out to the crowd as transgender and, seeking to prove it, starts to unbutton her black jeans.

At 6 a.m., Bonnie Marin begins another day cooking over a hot grill. Breakfast orders pour in, but as always her mind is elsewhere. She daydreams of giant storks standing on wet floors.

When Kelly Thornton became the artistic director of Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre in 2002, she was often asked why there was a need for a women’s theatre company.

Tiffany Deer is giggling uncontrollably. Her sister, filmmaker Tracey Deer, is holding the camera and laughing along. The laughter is contagious, the intimacy compelling. This is the opening sequence from Club Native, which, during its 78-minute running time, entertains viewers even as it educates and often challenges them.