Tartan Turban Secret Readings #47
Featuring Bänoo Zan, Cy Strom, Veena Gokhale, Kateri Lanthier, Lynn Tait and Michael Fraser. Curated by Gavin Barrett. 7–10 pm, Friday, September 26, 2025, at Barrett and Welsh.
About our featured writers
Bänoo Zan is a poet, translator, essayist, and poetry curator, with over 300 published pieces and three books including Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse and brave poetry open mic series (inception 2012). The monthly series bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions. Bänoo, along with Cy Strom, is the co-editor of the anthology Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution. Bänoo is the recipient of the 2025 Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award.
Cy Strom works professionally as an editor. He holds MA and MPhil degrees from Columbia University in early modern European history and has published in academic and other areas, including a chapter in the dazzling art monograph Oscar Cahén. He edits in different genres and sometimes languages, and has had a role in developing professional editorial standards and educational materials. A draughtsman and painter, for years he ran a drop-in session at an art studio. He is the co-editor of the anthology Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution.
Veena Gokhale, an immigrant shape shifter, has worked as a journalist, teacher, literary curator, and in the non-profit sector. She has also given Indian vegetarian cooking classes in French and English. She has published three works of fiction — Bombay Wali and Other Stories, Land for Fatimah, a novel (Guernica Editions, 2013 & 2018), and Annapurna’s Bounty, Indian Food Legends Retold (Dundurn Press 2025). Annapurna’s Bounty was included in several recommended reading lists by the CBC and others. Having lived in ten cities across three countries, she now calls Tiohtià:ke-Montréal home. Visit her at: www.veenago.com
Kateri Lanthier is the author of Reporting from Night (Iguana, 2011) and Siren (Véhicule, 2017), longlisted for the 2018 Pat Lowther Award. She won the 2013 Walrus Poetry Prize and was a winner in the Troubadour Competition, UK. Her poems have been published in Canada, the United States, and England, and included in six anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry 2014 and Mirrors and Windows: East-West Poems (ed. Anna Yin, Guernica, 2021). She has taught Creative Writing in the English and Drama Dept. at the University of Toronto Mississauga and is a Mentor in the MA in English in Creative Writing, U of T. Kateri teaches Poetry and Creative Writing courses in the School of Continuing Studies, University of Toronto.
Lynn Tait is an award-winning poet/photographer born in Willowdale. She’s been an Air Force brat in Trenton, lived in Richmond Hill and was a Rochdale resident, before settling down in Sarnia, Ontario. Her poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, Vallum, FreeFall, Literary Review of Canada, Quarantine Review, Prairie Fire, Anti-Heroin Chic, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Muleskinner Journal, Last Leaves and in over 100 North American anthologies. Her photographs have been exhibited locally, her photo art graces the covers of nine poetry books, published in Art Ascent, Still Point Arts Quarterly and featured in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge. She’s the author of the poetry collection You Break It You Buy It (Guernica Editions 2023).
Michael Fraser is published in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 and 2018. He has won numerous awards, including Freefall Magazine’s 2014 and 2015 poetry contests, the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize, the 2018 Gwendolyn Macewen Poetry Competition, and the League of Canadian Poets’ 2022 Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize. His latest book is With My Eyes Wide Open (Exile Editions 2023).
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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 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.
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.
Open mic
Anyone attending is welcome to read or perform (if you are a musician) in our limited-room open mic sessions. If you are a writer or musician who would like to perform in the open mic session, we ask that you listen in to at least one session to get the flavour of the evening and join in on your next visit. To participate in TTSR #47, please contact Gavin. This allows us to line up open mic readers and manage the evening in a way that respects each writer's work.
The ambience at our readings is intimate, extremely informal and very supportive. Open mic readers are given 4 minutes in total, including a brief introduction to themselves and their work. Detailed open mic guidelines are posted in our FB group.
Open mic readers who have published works they would like to offer for sale are free to mention these upon finishing their readings.
Smile, you'll be on camera 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.
About 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.
Accessibility Barrett and Welsh donates its beautiful open-concept office space as a venue for the readings, but the offices are on the top floor of an old townhouse that was converted, pre-AODA, into the more modern office building it is today. Unfortunately, this means the office is not wheelchair-accessible as there is no elevator and the stairs are fairly steep. We do our best to accommodate anyone with mobility needs, but this is mainly limited to helping them up the stairs or carrying assistive devices up for them. If anyone attending is hearing impaired, and lets us know in advance, we can arrange for the pieces being read by the featured writers (if they assent) to be projected. We also live-stream each reading to make each session accessible for audience members who cannot be present in person.
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.