Toronto Women's Bookstore
http://www.womensbookstore.com
416-922-8744

TWB Announcements
1. August and September workshops are now open to ALL women
2. Mamma Mia Booklaunch Wed Aug 25
3. Video Night Benefit Friday Aug 27
4. Fall Courses @ TWB. September: A Road Map to Art Making for the Independent Working Class Artist, October (Mondays) Money 101 for Women, October (Tuesdays) splitting open the world: radical women's poetry from 1970s to now.

1. SUNDAY AUGUST 22 from 5:30pm to 8:30pm DIY Zinesters - Tips on Getting Published Instructors: Sandra Alland & Jennifer LoveGrove (translation into castellano available by Constanza Durán)
All women are welcome to register for this workshop.
$10 No Refunds
For more info please come into the store or check out our website.
- - - - -
domingo el 29 de agosto
5:30-8:30
ESCRITURA CREATIVA en CASTELLANO PARA MUJERES DE HABLA HISPANA
Instructora: Constanza Durán This workshop will be offered in SPANISH ONLY.
All women are welcome to register and attend.
Fee : $10. No Refunds. For more info please come into the store or check out our website.
- - - - - - -
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 5:30pm to 8:30pm
Creative Writing - English Instructor: Lillian Allen
All women are welcome to register and attend this workshop.
Fee: $10 No Refunds. For more info please come into the store or check out our website.

2. Come to TWB for a reading with the women of Mamma Mia!
Good Italian Girls Talk Back! (ECW Press)
Collected by Maria Coletta McLean
Featuring: Maria Coletta McLean, Luciana Ricciutelli, Anna Nobile, Rosanna Battigelli, Maria Montini, Francesca Schembri, Ivana Barbieri and others!

This collection brings together 18 Italian-Canadian women who share their stories. Intimate, inspiring, brave, and confessional, these tales reveal women old enough to reminisce yet young enough to revolutionize. Balancing between the Old Country and the new, a respect for tradition and the need to break with it, this collection is a rare and surprising blend of humour and candor.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004 at 7pm
Toronto Women’s Bookstore
73 Harbord St (west of Spadina, south of Bloor)
Free admission
Light Refreshments provided Wheelchair accessible All are welcome to attend

3. “Expression Y Colour” a video night benefit to support the production of the film “Mexican Refugee” (to be released December 2004)
We will be screening the following films:
“First Latino American Dyke March” Director Alex Flores (Toronto )
“Celia and Rosita” Director Gisella Mello (Brazil)
Friday August 27 at 6pm
Toronto Women’s Bookstore
73 Harbord St.
Tickets are on sale.
Please call Jorge Pineda 416-834-2355 or Alex Flores 416-532-6694.
Sliding scale $6 to $10 Co-sponsored by Alucine Toronto Latin Film and Video Festival

4. September Course: Sunday Evenings:

A Road Map to Art Making for the Independent Working Class Artist
with facilitator Anna Camilleri

Register in person at the store or over the phone with a credit card. Pre-registration is required! This 4 week hands-on lab for artists working in a diversity of artistic practices examines how growing up working class or poor impacts the value we do or don’t attribute to our work, our sense of entitlement, and tackles internal and external roadblocks to developing our art. Our culture doesn't recognize artists as workers, artists are one of the largest groups of uunorganized and unprotected workers; and "art systems" are often steeped in structures that actively invest in the marginalization of poor and working class people while privileging middle-class cultural production and artists. Tools, resources and strategies will be shared, developed and vetted to approach systemic barriers toward building a road map for art making and art production.

* This course is open to folks who self-identify as artists and poor or working class *

Week 1 Who We Are/ Flipping the Script: who we are, where we are, where we want to be, identifying barriers, and conditions needed to develop as artists, naming positive qualities we bring to our art practice that we attribute to our class
Week 2 Creative Concepts/ Treatment and Proposals: getting clear on ideas, writing narrative descriptions and outlines for a variety of audiences, knowing your audience and ‘rules of engagement’ i.e. assessment criteria, juries etc.
Weeks 3 Compass: Tools and Tips: tools to help organize your work (time + resource management tips), tools to get you published, booked, screened, models for learning: mentorship and apprenticeship, promotion and marketing
Week 4 Drawing Your Own Map: the DIY approach, asking for what you want and asking for what you’re ‘worth’

About the Facilitator: Anna Camilleri is a writer, performance poet, curator and co-editor of Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity which was short-listed for a Lambda Award. She co-founded the performance troupe Taste This with whom she collaborated to publish Boys Like Her: Transfictions. Her forthcoming books, I Am a Red Dress, and Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts are due out in fall 2004 & 2005 with Arsenal Pulp Press. Anna is a first generation Canadian of Italian and Maltese ancestry from mixed working class and poor roots, and she is a self-taught, (not university educated) self-employed artist whose work is grounded in anti-oppression, feminist practice. www.annacamilleri.com.

Sunday evenings in September and October from 5:30 pm to 8 pm
September 12, 19, 26 and October 3rd
Fee: $52 (No refunds)
Register in person at the store or over the phone with a credit card.
Pre-registration is required!
*Participants will be asked to do exercises/ research between sessions, and to provide the facilitator with a one-page statement that includes a brief biography, a description of artistic practice, and what participants hope to gain (be as specific as possible).

. . . . . . . . . .
October Course: Monday Evenings:

Money 101 for Women
Facilitated by Amanda Mills, founder of Loose Change

Money is so powerful, it can drive us all a little crazy at times. In this workshop we will examine our relationship to money and begin to move money out of the driver’s seat so we can reclaim our place behind the wheel. This workshop endeavors to set you up with a toolkit of financial skills and the support to take a closer look at your own money and the myths that intensify money’s importance in your life.

Using business management and therapeutic techniques as well as art and journaling, we will identify roadblocks and self-sabotages that contribute to our money stress. There will be homework.

This course is open to women who want to gain better control over money and its impact on their lives. There will be no need to disclose anything about your own financial situation. Confidentiality is required and extended.

Week 1 Money’s Mask - A look at images and characteristics of money both personally and culturally.
Week 2 Money’s Mechanics - A review of tasks central to making our money work for us; identifying where the trouble is.
Week 3 Money’s Museum - A glimpse at our own private histories around money and its effect throughout our lives.
Week 4 Money’s Magic - A celebration of our discoveries and increased respect for our feelings and desires from which our financial decisions flow.

Drawing from her abilities as a financial therapist, in 2001 Amanda Mills created Loose Change Inc.- the place where money and feelings meet. With 19 years experience as a business management consultant for small business and the arts, Amanda is a Certified Financial Counsellor under the Bankruptcy Insolvency Act, a tax professional and a financial trouble-shooter. She is also a crisis counselor with a best-selling book on recovering from trauma.

“Women often feel that they know less about money than men. After 18 years of working with people and their money, I would say that more than half the financial affairs of Canadian households are run by women. We know more than we think!” Amanda Mills

Monday evenings in October 6:30pm to 9pm Mon Oct 4, 18, 25 and Mon Nov 1
Please note there is no class on Mon Oct 11 (Thanksgiving Day)
Course fee: $52. To register, call TWB at 416-922-8744 with a credit card number, or drop by.
We require payment for registration. Pre-registration is required. No Refunds. A small number of subsidized spots are available for each course. Please inquire at the front desk.

. . . . . . . . . . .
October Course: Tuesday Evenings

splitting open the world: radical women’s poetry, 1970s-now
with instructor Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

“Poetry is the song of the people, not the painted bird of the academic machine” Chrystos

Want to love poetry but think you hate it? This course is for anyone who hated English class or dropped out and anyone who wants to learn more about the past thirty years since feminism rocked the house of words, creating words to liberate, decolonize and heal. Participants will read, listen to and discuss a rich range of poetry and spoken word, from Ntozake Shange to Suheir Hammad, from Sister Vision to Sister Spit, and will go home with a comprehensive bibliography to help you go further.

This course is open to all women and transfolks; participants should be comfortable in a course that is multicultural but where writers of color and First Nations writers are at the center. Reading packets will be provided.

Week 1 Intro: The 1960s-70s explosion: Judy Grahn, Joy Harjo, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Sharon Olds, Pat Parker, Marge Piercy, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange.

Week 2 The 80s independent feminist publishing boom: Lillian Allen, Beth Brant, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Chrystos, Marilyn Dumont, Hattie Gossett, Aurora Levins Morales, Marilyn Hacker.

Week 3 The 90s spoken word revolution: Sapphire, Sister Spit, I Was Born with Two Tongues, Suheir Hammad, Patricia Smith, Zoe Whittall, Alexis O’ Hara, Taste This.

Week 4 Molotov mouths and rebel girls: Def Poetry Jam, Daphne Gottlieb, StaceyAnn Chin, Ishle Park, Mango Tribe, Maewon, d’bi young, Andana Esteva, Dani Montgomery.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a U.S. raised, Toronto based queer Sri Lankan writer and spoken word artist. Her writing has been published in the anthologies Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, Dangerous Families: Queers Surviving Sexual Abuse, the Lambda Award-nominated Brazen Femme, Without a Net: the female experience of growing up working class, and Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, as well as in the periodicals Bamboo Girl, Bitch, big boots, Broken Pencil, Colorlines, Fireweed, and Anything That Moves. She has performed her work throughout the United States and Canada and she sells her chapbook, Consensual Genocide, at the Toronto Women's Bookstore.

Tuesday evenings in October 6:30pm to 9pm
Tuesday October 5, 12, 19 and 26

Course fee: $52.
To register, call TWB at 416-922-8744 with a credit card number, or drop by.
We require payment for registration. Pre-registration is required. No Refunds. A small number of subsidized spots are available for each course. Please inquire at the front desk.