The Word On The Street Toronto Book & Magazine Festival – Black Alchemy: How Our Stories Transform Cities and Spaces

The third City Imagines event is presented in partnership with the Festival of Literary Diversity. FOLD Artistic Director Jael Richardson hosts this discussion with Drew Brown, Jay Pitter, and Eternity Martis.

The City Imagines series explores books that shape cities. Join us online for a wide ranging series of discussions about cities and the people who shape them. The full City Imagines schedule can be found here.

Streaming details for this session will be emailed to attendees 24-hours before the event.

Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower, a book columnist on CBC’s q and the founder and Artistic Director for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD). Her debut novel, Gutter Child, arrives in 2021.

Drew Brown has the heart for connecting with people through music and story. Artist and advocate, poet and pastor, songwriter and storyteller – this multi-award winning artist shares his songs around the world, playing on large festival stages, churches, concert halls, pubs, and holding house concerts across the country. Drew lives in Milton, Ontario and engages/encourages people to think about antiracism and how to live out justice & an “open table”-minded presence in their local neighbourhood context. Drew recently started a side-project “Hymns For The Architect” in which he creates sonic liturgies, prayers, and songs for the seasons of the church and the seasons of life. The new nine-track album “Solace From Solitude” consists of instrumental ambient music for the sacred spaces of quiet reflection, meditation, prayer and quiet times.

Jay Pitter, MES, is an award-winning placemaker whose practice mitigates growing divides in cities across North America. She spearheads institutional city-building projects specializing in public space design and policy, forgotten densities, mobility equity, gender-responsive design, inclusive public engagement and healing fraught sites. What distinguishes Jay is her multi-disciplinary approach, located at the nexus of urban design and social equity, which translates community insights and aspirations into the built environment. Ms. Pitter also makes significant contributions to urbanism theory and discourse. She has developed an equitable planning certificate course with the University of Detroit Mercy’s School of Architecture and taught a graduate-level urban planning course at Ryerson University, among others. Jay also delivers keynote addresses for entities such as the United Nations Women and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is the co-editor of Subdivided: City-Building in an Age of Hyper-Diversity, and her forthcoming book, Where We Live, will be published in 2021. Ms. Pitter is currently the John Bousfield Distinguished Visitor in Planning at the University of Toronto.

Eternity Martis is an award-winning Toronto-based journalist and a senior editor at Xtra. She earned an honours BA and a Certificate in Writing from Western University and an MJ from Ryerson University. She was a 2017 National Magazine Awards finalist for Best New Writer and the 2018 winner of the Canadian Online Publishing. She is the author of They Said This Would Be Fun, a powerful, moving memoir about what it’s like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus.

Register HERE.