Tartan Turban Secret Readings #45
Featuring Gary Barwin, Deepa Rajagopalan, Tyler Pennock and Charlie Petch. Curated by Gavin Barrett.
About the featured writers
Deepa Rajagopalan is the author of the short story collection, Peacocks of Instagram, shortlisted for the 2024 Giller prize, and an Apple Books Best Books of the Year 2024. She won the 2021 PEN Canada New Voices Award for the title story of the collection. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph.
Born in Saudi Arabia, Deepa moved to India as an adolescent, and later to the United States and Canada in her twenties. She is now working on her first novel, We Have Come Empty Handed, about a disparate group of Indian workers in Saudi Arabia, whose lives become entangled, caught in the exigencies of war, deception, and intolerance.
Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist and the author of 34 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984. He has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award and, twice, the League of Canadian Poets' Spoken Word Award. He has won the League of Canadian Poets’ Lifetime Membership Award, the Leacock Medal and, three times, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. Recent work includes Bird Fiction, an interactive poetry multimedia work (with Sarah Imrisek) featured in Hamilton Arts Week June 2025 and a poetry book and recording with Lillian Allen and Gregory Betts, Muttertongue. Recordings of his work are available at https://garybarwin.bandcamp.com and https://muttertonguetrio.bandcamp.com/ He lives in Hamilton with an evidence-based envy of better poets.
Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/ transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. A poet, playwright, librettist, and musician, Petch was the winner of the Sheri-D Golden Beret Award from The League of Canadian Poets (2020), and founder of Hot Damn it's a Queer Slam. Petch is a touring performer, as well as a mentor, host, and workshop facilitator. Their debut poetry collection, Why I Was Late (Brick Books), won the 2022 ReLit Award. They have been featured on the CBC's Q, and was the Writer In Residence for Berton House. Their solo show No one's special at the hot dog cart debuted in 2024. Their new poetry book Infinite Audition is launching Sept 2025
Tyler Pennock was the inaugural Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences’ Indigenous Artist-in-Residence at Carleton University in Fall 2013. They are a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Metis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta, and is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013. Their first Book, Bones (Brick Books) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry. Their second book, Blood was released in September 2022. They also teach at the Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto.
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About The Tartan Turban Secret Readings
In good weather, Barrett and Welsh hosts a (not so) “secret" reading series on its rather lovely open-air office rooftop deck or in its large open-concept studio space in Toronto. In winter, our readings migrate online in a virtual reading format that accepts writers from across the country and can be attended from anywhere in the world.
The Tartan Turban Secret Readings feature poetry, drama and prose readings and celebrate Canadian multicultural writing created by multicultural, minority and IBPOC writers. The idea is to provide a platform for IBPOC writers with few such platforms. At the same time, all writers who want to celebrate Canada’s multiculturalism, literary diversity and Indigenous heritage and have talent to share are welcomed.
Curators change from reading to reading. If you would like to curate an evening, contact Gavin Barrett, who is the series curator.
The sessions are photographed, filmed and streamed on FB/YouTube live and recordings will eventually be posted on YouTube and the series website. Please be aware that by attending this event, you agree to be photographed and/or filmed and give permission to use your likeness in promotional and/or marketing materials.
https://tartanturbansecretreadings.org/
Tartan Turban Secret Readings are variously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the League of Canadian Poets, The Writers’ Union of Canada and Barrett and Welsh.
Barrett and Welsh is a minority-owned, creativity-powered, change-making advertising and branding agency that puts ideas first to make ideas last. A certified B Corporation, it uses design and advertising to create access and inclusion for racialized minorities and persons with disabilities.
About the series co-curators
Gavin Barrett is the series curator of the Tartan Turban Secret Readings, which he co-founded with the late Mayank Bhatt in 2017.
Mayank Bhatt's novel Belief was published in 2016 by Mawenzi House. The novel explores youth radicalization and alienation and the impact of terrorism on a family in the context of the failure of the immigration and settlement framework in Canada. Mayank Bhatt immigrated to Toronto in 2008 from Mumbai (Bombay), where he worked as a journalist. His short stories have been published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II. In Canada, he worked as a security guard, as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and as an organizer for the Festive of South Asian Literature and Art. He lived in Toronto with his family and passed away after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2022.
Gavin Barrett is a poet, creative entrepreneur, and the author of a collection of poems titled Understan (Mawenzi House, 2020), a CBC Books recommendation. He was born in Bombay and lived in Hong Kong for several years before immigrating to Canada. Gavin’s poetry has been published in Reasons for Belonging (Viking Penguin India), an anthology of 14 Indian poets; The Joao Roque Literary Journal; the Pen India journal; The Folio; The Independent (Bombay); The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad; and Poiesis, the Bombay Poetry Circle journal. He was a contributing writer to This|ability, a book on Canada’s art brut and outsider artists. He is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of idea consultancy and brand advertising agency Barrett and Welsh. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Authors Association (Toronto), PEN Canada and is EDI co-chair of The League of Canadian Poets.