Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

 SANDRA BREWSTER NOW A FINALIST IN $60,000 CANADIAN PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD The Toronto Guyanese community is cheering onn Sandra Brewster, one of the three finalists for the 2023 Scotiabank Photography Award, Canada's largest and most prestigious annual peer-nominated prize for photographic art.   Brewster, who was born to Guyanese parents, is known for her work in drawing, video, photo-based works, and installation that explore themes of identity and representation. Her art is in demand by some of the world's top galleries, and her public sculpture "A Place to Put Your Things" is currently on view at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Sandra Brewster works in drawing, video, photo-based works, and installation. Her themes focus on identity and representation, and movement in the depiction of gesture resulting in a re-presentation of the portrait. She uses specific landscapes as metaphors, and manipulates old photographs to centre the people within them. NINA SIMONE BY BREWST

It happened today Canisia Lubrin one of three Canadian poets in the running for one of the world’s largest poetry purses, the Griffin Prize By Stephen Weir:   With each passing major literary prize, St Lucian Canadian poet  Canisia Lubrin  shows that her place is on the world’s literary stage.  Fresh on the heels of winning the $200,000 American Windham-Campbell Prize, the Whitby author has learned today that she is now in the running for Canada’s largest poetry prize. This morning,  Scott Griffin, the founder of  The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry , announced the International and Canadian shortlists for this year’s prize. Three Canadians including Lubrin are in the running for the annual $65,000 Canadian poetry prize. The Griffin was founded in 2000 to encourage and celebrate excellence in poetry. The prize is for first edition books of poetry written in, or translated into, English and submitted from anywhere in the world. Every year the Griffin family gives out two prizes ;

Vancouver poet in the running for the Griffin Prize with a book about Black Womanhood Last week the Caribbean Camera told readers about Guyanese Canadian poet Kale Kellough and his book Magnetic Equator that is in the consideration for the $65,000 Griffin Prize. This week, as part two of the story, we introduce you to Chantel Gibson the author of How She Read . It too is in the shortlist for Canada’s biggest and richest annual poetry prize. Chantal Gibson is an artist and an awa rd-winning teacher. She teaches writing and visual communication in the School of Interactive Arts & Technology at Simon Fraser University. She lives Vancouver with deep roots in Nova Scotia’s black community. How She Read is Gibson’s debut book of poetry. Her poems challenge historic representations of Black womanhood and Otherness in the Canadian cultural imagination. How She Read is a collection of genre-blurring poems about the representation of Black women, their hearts, minds and

 . APRIL 2nd – Big Big Day For Three Canadian Book Prizes Today is an important day for three book prizes – one prize announces its grand winner tonight, while two other prizes announce their shortlists this morning . In Ottawa this evening, the Writer’s Trust will be awarding the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing . The winner will receive $25,000, the runner-ups received $2,,5000. The shortlist has five authors including one who is a past RBC Taylor Prize winner and one a RBC Taylor Prize finalist: • Margaret MacMillan - The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 • RBC CTP winner: Charles Montgomery - Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design • Donald J. Savoie -Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? How Government Decides and Why • RBC CTP Finalist Graeme Smith -The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan • Paul Wells - The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006 – This morning the John W. Dafoe Boo