2020 - 2022
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: Tavia CHRISTINA
Tavia Christina, is a multidisciplinary (Métis) artist residing in Toronto (Tkarón:to). Currently completing her BFA in Performance Dance, with a double minor in French Languages and Indigenous Studies at Ryerson University, she has also studied abroad with Israels Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, where she performed repertoires of Rami BeBe’er, The Cullberg Ballet and a new creation by Ilya Nikurov. Tavia has worked in the commercial field for Tourism Toronto’s commercial The Views are Different Here and performed in music videos such as The Beaches’s Snakes Tongue Majid Jordan’s Body Talk and Little Scream’s Dark Dances Recently, she has worked for the Queer company LemonTree Creations, part of Factory Theatre’s Foundry Unit, and had a feature role in Theatre Passe Murraille’s new play workshop series, playing the role of Arjola in The Blood Cycle. As an emerging choreographer, Tavia seeks humanness. She believes in work that manifest s itself from the soul; work that is not just for the stage but for the mind and body. She is also interested in creating socio-political work, pieces that revolve around the unspoken stories in today s society. Tavia also aspires to produce multidisciplinary work. She puts to use her other talents ( text and, design) in her choreographic process. She has choreographed works for her own company; Near&Far Projects, Torgan Dance Company (London, UK), Kalos Collective, Ryerson University students, and solo works for herself.
MUSICIAN-IN-RESIDENCE: AFARIN Mansouri
Afarin Mansouri is an award-winning composer whose works have been performed in Canada, the United States, England, Iran, and South America. In 2018, her opera “Forbidden” gained national and international attention. She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Iranian-Canadian Composers of Toronto, produced more than 30 new music programs in Toronto, and has worked with Canadian League of Composers and North York Arts as a counselor and Board member. As a soprano, Afarin has performed her own new music. As an educator and researcher, Afarin has led many opera workshops. www.afarinmansouri.com
PLAYWRIGHT-IN-RESIDENCE: POLLY PHOKEEV
Polly Phokeev is a playwright, dramaturg, actor and arts educator, born in Russia and based in Toronto. She has written numerous award-winning works including Seams, How We Are, and The Mess. She holds the 2016 Safewords New Canadian Play Award, the 2016 MyEntertainment World Award for Outstanding New Work, and was recently honoured with the inaugural Award for a Young Canadian Playwright. She is currently adapting the classic Russian novel Master and Margarita with Mikaela Davies and Hailey Gillis (to be workshopped with the Stratford Festival in summer 2019), and writing her new play Kostroma.
VISUAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE: Janet read
Janet Read is a painter, musician, and poet, who grew up near the shores of Lake Simcoe. Read has sought the water’s edge ever since. Born and educated in Toronto, her roots go back to the Ottawa Valley Irish, Belfast and county Wexford in Ireland. Perhaps this explains a fondness for fiddle music, poetry and the sea.
Residencies in Newfoundland and Ireland and travels in Norway, Iceland, and Scotland have allowed her continued access to the sea, leading to a lifetime investigation of water, as a metaphor for strength and fragility. Read holds an MA in the philosophy of art, focusing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur.
Residencies in Newfoundland and Ireland and travels in Norway, Iceland, and Scotland have allowed her continued access to the sea, leading to a lifetime investigation of water, as a metaphor for strength and fragility. Read holds an MA in the philosophy of art, focusing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur.
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: Danila Botha
Danila Botha is the author of two short story collections, Got No Secrets (Tightrope Books 2010), and For All the Men (and Some of the Women I've Known) (Tightrope 2016), which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards and The ReLit Award. She is also the author of the novel Too Much on the Inside (Quattro Books, 2015), which won a Book Excellence Award and was short listed for a ReLit Award. Danila holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Guelph University, and teaches Creative Writing at University of Toronto and mentors writers at Humber School for Writers. She’s currently working on a new collection of short stories, and finally finishing her next novel. You can find out more about her by visiting her website https://www.danilabotha.com/.
2019 - 2020
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: RACHEL FACCHINI
Rachel Facchini is an emerging artist and co-artistic director of Near&Far Projects (NFP). Throughout her residency term she will be collaborating with co-director, Tavia Christina and five dance artists. Both Rachel and Tavia are graduates of Ryerson University’s BFA Performance Dance program. Founded in 2016, NFP is inspired by the relationship between the body and creates dance which reflects an intersection between various philosophical theories and movement. They are an ambitious and humble duo who are grateful to be working in the Heliconian Club. www.rachelfacchini.com
VISUAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE: VANESSA MCKERNAN
Vanessa McKernan is a Toronto based oil painter focused on a type of figurative painting that has its roots in story- telling. In 2006 she completed her honours BFA at Concordia University, majoring in Studio Art. Since then she has maintained a studio practice devoted to the pursuit of truth and magic through painting. Vanessa works out of a space in the Distillery District and lives in the east end with her husband Christian and three-year-old son Jules.
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: STEPHANIE WYELD
Stephanie Wyeld made her writing debut in grade eight when the teacher read her story about the Titanic aloud to the class with the lights off for effect. She has a B.Sc. (Kin), an M.Eng. and a penchant for volunteering. She has recently given up the prestige of counting money for the PTA and is now on the Executive of the Canadian Authors’ Association – Toronto. Nothing, though, has been as exciting as when she finished writing her first novel, which is currently out on submission. While she waits, she gnaws her nails and writes her next book.
2018 - 2019
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: TERRILL MAGUIRE
Dance Artist-in-Residence Terrill Maguire has had an extensive and wide-ranging career in dance and related arts. Her creation and performance life have been located in her native California, New York, Toronto, and Ottawa. Her work has been presented in theatres large and small, on television and film; in trees and forests; fountains, galleries, city streets and historical sites. She has a long-standing commitment to engaging people of all ages in creative interactions through community arts initiatives, and has spent over a decade working in remote communities in northern Ontario, bringing artists of varied disciplines to join her in working with under-served youth on reserves.
MUSICIAN-IN-RESIDENCE: VICTORIA YEH
Victoria Yeh is a Toronto-based fusion electric violinist. Her unmistakably unique style can be seen on stages across the country as a soloist and band member ofBarlow-Yeh-McNeil, Don’t Look Down, Groove Chakra, and Michael White’sOrchestral Zeppelin. She also currently serves as Concertmaster for theSummerhill Orchestra, Musician-In-Residence for theHeliconian Club, Chair for Brazil Strings, and co-host for theToronto Creative Strings Workshop. www.VictoriaYeh.com
PLAYWRIGHT-IN-RESIDENCE: HANNAH RITTNER
Hannah Rittner studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU where she graduated with distinction. Hannah’s play, Three Women Mourn the Apocalypse, was a finalist for the 2018 Safewords New Canadian Play Prize. Her screenplay, Desire, won the award for the best Canadian short screenplay at the Hollywood North Awards. Hannah has been nominated twice for the internationally celebrated Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Love and Exile and The Unbelievers. She was a semi-finalist for the inaugural 2018 Ellen Ross Stuart Award. Her company, LACE Productions, produced the Unbelievers at the 2016 Summerworks Performance Festival. The play gained national attention from the Globe and Mail for merging theatre with social change.
VISUAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE: BETH JAMES
Beth James is an emerging artist living and working in Newtonville, Ontario. She holds a graduate certificate from the Haliburton School of Art and Design and a BA in visual arts from York University.
She is fascinated by the artistic process, always pushing her materials and ideas to grow creatively and to generate new ideas. She uses paint and colour to tell abstracted stories that connect to nostalgia, memory and past experience. Lines are often featured as a vehicle for telling dynamic stories and creating rhythm in her pieces.Beth James is an emerging artist living and working in Newtonville, Ontario. She holds a graduate certificate from the Haliburton School of Art and Design and a BA in visual arts from York University.
She is fascinated by the artistic process, always pushing her materials and ideas to grow creatively and to generate new ideas. She uses paint and colour to tell abstracted stories that connect to nostalgia, memory and past experience. Lines are often featured as a vehicle for telling dynamic stories and creating rhythm in her pieces.
She is fascinated by the artistic process, always pushing her materials and ideas to grow creatively and to generate new ideas. She uses paint and colour to tell abstracted stories that connect to nostalgia, memory and past experience. Lines are often featured as a vehicle for telling dynamic stories and creating rhythm in her pieces.Beth James is an emerging artist living and working in Newtonville, Ontario. She holds a graduate certificate from the Haliburton School of Art and Design and a BA in visual arts from York University.
She is fascinated by the artistic process, always pushing her materials and ideas to grow creatively and to generate new ideas. She uses paint and colour to tell abstracted stories that connect to nostalgia, memory and past experience. Lines are often featured as a vehicle for telling dynamic stories and creating rhythm in her pieces.
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: CINDY WATSON
Cindy Watson fell in love with the written word reading Green Eggs and Ham aloud for the first time as a young girl and the love affair has been lifelong. She is the award-winning author of Out of Darkness: The Jeff Healey Story (Dundurn) and Unloved and Endangered Animals (Enslow). Her book, Myth of a Man’s World is due out next year. Cindy is the founder of the Muskoka Authors Association, Chair of the North Words Literary Festival and past Regional Director of the Canadian Authors Association.Cindy holds a BA from U of T’s Victoria College, an LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School, and has recently attended Humber College’s renowned Creative Writing School. After a long career as a social justice lawyer, advocating for women, Cindy has founded Women On Purpose, dedicated to encouraging women to live a life with purpose and on purpose.
2017 - 2018
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: EMILY LAW
Emily is a contemporary dancer, street dancer, and emerging choreographer. She graduated from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and has trained and competed in house dancing and waacking. Emily is a founding member of Mix Mix Dance Collective, the Toronto house dance crew Warehouse Jacks and Parks N’ Wreck. She has worked with companies and artists such as: Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, The Dietrich Group, The Chimera Project and Alias Dance Project. Her choreographic work has been showcased on companies and in festivals such as: Toronto Dance Theatre, The Next Stage Theatre Festival, Toronto Fringe Festival, CanAsian Dance Festival, The Reel Asian Film Festival, Guelph Dance & Fall For Dance North. She has been nominated for two Dora Mavor Moore awards, a Gemini, & the 2017 Premier’s award.
Nevena Niagolova
Coming from generations of artists, Nevena Niagolova began art lessons as a child and continued her formal studies at the National Fine Arts School in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she was born. Since moving to Canada, Nevena has received a degree in graphic design from the Ontario College of Art and Design, studied interaction design at the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab, and recently finished her Masters of Architecture at the University of Toronto. Her paintings are expressions of emotions - spontaneous bursts of energy with dynamic, high-contrast relationships. Her website can be found here: https://nevena.org/bloggy/.
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: KATE MARSHALL FLAHERTY
Last year’s writer in residence unabashedly admits that “Poetry is my lifeline.” She has published five books of poetry, including Reaching V (Guernica Editions) and Radiant, launching in 2019 with Inanna Press. Her work has been featured in numerous Canadian and international journals and anthologies and shortlisted for Descant’s Best Canadian Poem, the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Prize, the Robert Frost Poetry Award and others. She is presently an official Poet in the Schools across Canada, and Toronto Representative for the League of Canadian Poets. She has participated in National Random Acts of Poetry and will inaugurate “The Poet Is In” with Marie Howe in Toronto’s Union Station in February 2019. She guides StillPoint Writing Workshops in schools, youth shelters, universities and hospitals. Kate has a Master’s Degree in Canadian literature and a Bachelor of Education. See her powerful performance poetry set to music at www.katemarshallflaherty.ca/kmf/.
2016 - 2017
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: ASHLEY BURTON
Ashley holds a BFA, BED and MA from York University. She trained with many teachers including Carol Anderson, Susan Cash, Julia Sasso and Allen Kaeja. Her choreography has been showcased at the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, Ffida International Dance Festival and Nuit Blanche. Métis by heritage, she contributed to Shifting Currents: Finding Balance, an aboriginal youth project at the Banff Centre. In 2008, she founded and directed Arts North, northern Ontario’s only multidisciplinary arts studio in Sudbury, Ontario, for youth and adults. Ashley was honoured to receive the Business Professional Women’s Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award for Greater Sudbury in 2013.
Anja Karisik
Anja was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and immigrated to Toronto in 1996. She studied art history at the University of Toronto and pursued a decade-long career in the commercial art gallery business. All the while, she steadily painted and exhibited her pastels and oils, recently committing herself to a more focused and dedicated practice. Anja's mark making is inspired by the ever-changing landscapes and interconnected, living energy of our planet. Her personal relationship with nature, space, textures, history and geography are woven in her paintings. For Anja, surface is how a painting speaks best, and she endeavours to create lively, rich surfaces, coupled with the play of form and raw colour. For more information, visit www.anjakarisik.com.
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: MARCIA WALKER
This particular year the position was designated the Jessie London Writer in Residence to honour a longtime Club member who had passed away. Marcia Walker’s writing has appeared in Prism international, Room, Event, Antigonish Review, University of Toronto Magazine, The Globe and Mail, CBC Radio and The Broken Social Scene Story Project by House of Anansi Press. She has been shortlisted for Prism’s fiction and non-fiction prize and was a finalist for the Lascaux Fiction award. Her play, Recess, was part of Nightwood’s Write From the Hip playwright development program and the 2016 Groundswell Festival. Marcia is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA program and also possesses a law degree. Her website is www.marciawalker.ca/
2015 - 2016
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: ALYSA PIRES
Alysa is an Honours BFA graduate of Ryerson University's Theatre School. Her company, Alysa Pires Dance Projects, made its critically acclaimed full-length debut with Exterminating Angel at the 2016 Toronto Fringe Festival. She is one of the 2017 winners of Northwest Dance Project’s International Choreographic Competition. Alysa spent two seasons (2016-2018) with the National Ballet of Canada as part of their Choreographic Workshop. An excerpt from the resulting ballet "In Between" was performed as part of NBOC's 2018 Gala.
Visual artist-in-residence: ruthia pak regis
Ruthia Pak Regis is a painter based in Toronto. She specialized in painting and drawing at York University (BFA, 2000), also studying painting in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. The use of photo references has been the catalyst in the expression of the sense of struggle in her painting style and ultimately herself. Through the observation of various lines, shapes and colours she walks the line between realism and abstraction, sincerity and performance, humility and arrogance. The struggle of maintaining a balance is visually represented on the canvas in her Visual-artist-in-residence solo show, Manipulated Contemplations (2016).
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: DAWN PROMISLOW
Author of Jewels and Other Stories (Mawenzi House, 2010), Dawn Promislow is a perceptive storyteller. Her book was long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2011 and named one of the eight best fiction debuts of 2010 by The Globe and Mail. In her own words, "I loved my stint as writer-in-residence. I enjoyed sharing time, interests, and work with other writers, and I definitely benefited from a collaboration with visual artists for an exhibition. I found it rewarding to review other writers' manuscripts, and I gave a short fiction workshop. This workshop, my manuscript reviews, and the interdisciplinary collaborations became a dialogue from which I am grateful to have learned, too." Dawn studied English and French literature at the University of Cape Town and attended the Humber School for Writers. For more information, visit her website at www.dawnpromislow.com.
2014 - 2015
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: AVIVA FLEISING
Simultaneously pursuing her love of dance and Arts Management, Aviva is the General Manager with the Canadian Dance Assembly and an independent artist. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Contemporary Dance from the University of Calgary and a Certificate in Arts & Cultural Management from Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton. An avid traveler, Aviva has trained and performed in Cuba, Italy and throughout North America. Aviva began choreographing in 2004 with a full-length interdisciplinary show for the Montreal Fringe Festival, and since then has created for festivals in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. In 2012 she formed her own company Tziporah Productions to carry out her independent projects. Aviva is also a member of the Drum and Dance group IjoVudu Dance.
WRITER-IN- RESIDENCE: KAREN SHENFELD
I was drawn to apply for the position by my desire to become part of a historical Canadian institution. I also wanted to meet talented and convivial women who were not only colleagues in the fields of writing and filmmaking but who were also musicians, visual artists, or dancers. I was not disappointed! During my WIR tenure, and for the past four years as a member of the Club, my life has been enriched by new friendships and chances to see a variety of intimate performances and view interesting art.”
Karen Shenfeld has published three books with Guernica Editions: The Law of Return (1999), which won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry in 2001, The Fertile Crescent (2005), and My Father's Hands Spoke in Yiddish (2010). https://www.guernicaeditions.com/author/198 Shenfeld is an alumna of York University, with a BA in English literature. Her poetry has also appeared in journals and anthologies published in Canada, the U.S., England, South Africa, and Bangladesh. It has been featured on Canada's CBC Radio and CKLN, and on 39 Dover Street, a British short-wave radio programme. As well, Shenfeld has brought her poetic sensibility to the writing of magazine stories and to filmmaking. Her personal documentaries include: Il Giardino, The Gardens of Little Italy (2007) and Maggie & Merly (2017). She is currently writing a screenplay that has been optioned by director Bruce McDonald.
Karen Shenfeld has published three books with Guernica Editions: The Law of Return (1999), which won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry in 2001, The Fertile Crescent (2005), and My Father's Hands Spoke in Yiddish (2010). https://www.guernicaeditions.com/author/198 Shenfeld is an alumna of York University, with a BA in English literature. Her poetry has also appeared in journals and anthologies published in Canada, the U.S., England, South Africa, and Bangladesh. It has been featured on Canada's CBC Radio and CKLN, and on 39 Dover Street, a British short-wave radio programme. As well, Shenfeld has brought her poetic sensibility to the writing of magazine stories and to filmmaking. Her personal documentaries include: Il Giardino, The Gardens of Little Italy (2007) and Maggie & Merly (2017). She is currently writing a screenplay that has been optioned by director Bruce McDonald.
2013 - 2014
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: ANGELA BLUMBERG
Angela obtained her BFA in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre London, UK, and her MFA in choreography at York University. She and presented her work in Germany, the UK, Sweden, and Taiwan. In Canada her work has been produced at the Toronto Fringe Festival, Nuit Blanche, Dancematters, dance: made in canada / fait au canada, Springworks, and The New Music Festival of the University of Toronto. Over the past several years, she has worked with the composition department of the University of Toronto fostering collaborations between dance and music. In 2014 she developed Discover Your Dance a project that brings contemporary dance to elementary schools.
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: JASMINE D'COSTA
A highly dedicated wordsmith and charismatic personality, D’Costa was chosen as writer in residence while she was trying to establish herself as a writer and actor after a successful career in business. Her first book of short stories, Curry is Thicker than Water (Bookland Press, 2009) was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Prize and nominated for the White Pine Award. Her short story "Metamorphosis" made it to the short list for the Dastaan International Prize. Her work has been reviewed nationally and internationally, including Quill and Quire and The Globe and Mail. Her next major project was a work of literary fiction called A Matter of Geography (Mosaic Press). Even before it was published, it was short-listed for the Tuscany Prize in 2015. In the spring of 2017 she held a triumphant book launch at the Heliconian Club and in June 2018 she was a featured author at the Club’s Literary Lecture series. www.mosaic-press.com/product/a-matter-of-geography
2012 - 2013
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: NOVA BHATTACHARYA
Nova is the former President of the Toronto Arts Council. An impassioned advocate for the arts, she is a founding member of the South Asian Dance Alliance Canada, member of the South Asian Dance Alliance Canada, and past co-chair of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists-Ontario Chapter. She dedicates many volunteer hours to initiatives that promote the value of the arts in society. She began her career with the Menaka Thakkar Dance Company and as an independent dance artist appeared with a number of Canadian companies. Her powerful, humanistic dance works have been described as “transforming bharatanatyam dance vocabulary into stunning contemporary dance” (Globe & Mail). In 2008 she founded Nova Dance, the company’s productions have been presented across Canada and in Germany and Japan and have garnered 5 Dora Mavor Moore Award Nominations.
WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: SUSAN VIETS
The Heliconian Club’s first writer-in-residence in 2012 was Susan Viets, the year she published her adventure-filled memoir, Picnic at the Iron Curtain: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. The book is based on her experiences reporting on the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from 1988 – 1998 and follows through with an eyewitness account of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004. Susan remains obsessed with Ukraine and Russia. A globetrotter at heart, she continues to travel with her husband Aamer, often back to Europe and most recently, to India. Club highlights include enjoying the company of literature section members and attending the literary lecture series. Visit www.susanviets.com to read some of her articles for The Guardian and the Independent, and to see photographs and videos from her time reporting from Belarus, Bosnia Herzegegovina, Croatia, (East) Germany, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Susan holds an MA in history and an MBA. Susan is now exploring fiction writing in addition to working for the Ontario Government as a researcher.
2011 - 2012
DANCER-IN-RESIDENCE: KEIKO KITANO THOMPSON
Keiko has an MA in Dance from the Japan Women’s College Education where she taught modern dance and improvisation until she moved to Toronto in 2003. As a part-time faculty member of the Department of Dance at York University, she created and performed around Toronto. Her unique style is influenced by her study of Butoh and Japanese dance. She has worked with many artists in Tokyo and abroad, and has collaborated with local artists such as Parmela Attariwara, Aki Takahashi, Nagata-Shachu and Rick Thomson, as well as international artists such as Tamuran Music and costume designer Shingo Tokihiro. Her choreography has been presented at various venues and festivals. As a dancer, she has worked with many local choreographers including Holly Small, Sashar Zarif, Susan Cash, Maxine Heppner, Viv Moore, and Emily Cheung. In 2011 she co-founded Green Tea Collective.
