When Does Fiction Become True? Explorations on Stage, Film and in Literature

Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a writer from BC. He is the author of The Place of Scraps, winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award; Un/Inhabited; and Injun, winner of the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize. Using text from 92 old pulp Western novels, Injun probes issues of race and colonialism and excavates the subtexts of possession, territory and erasure.

Carmen Aguirre is an author, actor and playwright. Her first book, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, was the winner of the 2012 CBC Radio’s Canada Reads competition. Her more recent memoir is Mexican Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Revolution and she has over eighty film, television and stage acting credits to her name.

Daniel Canty is a Montreal-based writer and film director who works in literature, film, theatre and design, translation, and new media. One of his short films, Longuay (2012), melds the gaze of an ancient French abbey with that of a tablet computer, while Cinema for the Blind (2010) lets the audience slip into oneiric depths behind the cinema screen.