The following were the artists in residence in 2019:

Rabindranath Maharaj – author

Ajax

Rabindranath Maharaj is the author of six novels and three short-story collections. His novel, The Amazing Absorbing Boy, won both the Toronto Book Award and the Trillium Fiction Prize. Maharaj’s books have also been nominated for various awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, The Chapters First Novel Award, the Bocas Literary Prize and The Rogers Fiction Award. In January 2013, Maharaj was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Marisa Hoicka – multi-media artist and film colourist

Toronto

Marisa Hoicka, a multi-media artist and film colourist, recently completed a residency at Ireland’s Sirius Arts Centre. Hoicka has choreographed for Dancemakers and Toronto Dance Theatre. Her “This is Not a Test” was on all Air Canada flights, and her videos were featured in Berlin’s Galerie Kurt Im Hirsch, San Francisco’s MoMA, Oakville Galleries and across Canada. She mixed painting, performance and installation in solos at Toronto’s 7a*11d and the Power Plant. Her “Uncle Wink” participated in the AGO’s “The Other Painting Competition.” Hoicka has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council. She has a Master of Digital Media degree (Ryerson) and a Studio Art Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (Concordia).

Dr. Suzanne M. Steele – poet, installation artist, librettist and scholar

Vancouver, British Columbia

Dr. Suzanne M. Steele is an award-winning poet, installation artist, librettist and scholar. She is Métis from the Gaudry and Fayant families. From 2008-10, Steele served as an official Canadian war artist – Canada’s first poet sent into a war zone (Afghanistan). Over an 18-month period, Steele was embedded with the First Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. In 2012, Steele and composer Jeff Ryan premiered their critically successful symphonic/choral work, Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation, a major commission from the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. It is anticipated to be commercially released in 2018. Steele is represented by Ian Arnold of Catalysts TM (Toronto).

Esmond Lee – visual artist specializing in photography

Toronto

Esmond Lee is a Chinese-Canadian visual artist formally trained as an architect, living and working near Toronto. As a second-generation immigrant, Lee’s work centres on the long-term, intergenerational experiences of migration. Drawing from his background in architecture, his images explore identity, belonging and nuanced cultural collisions in the built environment. Lee has exhibited at Gallery 44, Koffler Centre of the Arts and the University of Waterloo. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Toronto, and a Bachelor of Architectural Studies degree from Carleton University. Lee is supported by the Ontario Arts Council and recognized by the Ontario Association of Architects. www.esmondlee.com

Janieta Eyre – photographer

Toronto

Janieta Eyre is an acclaimed international photographer based in Toronto. In her distinctive auto-portraits, she frequently presents herself as a set of twins. Often employing fantastic and carnivalesque settings, Eyre uses props and costumes to disrupt the fixity of image and identity. She manipulates the theatricality at play in her work by incorporating art-historical and literary references, while leaving space for the integration of fictional representations. Eyre has exhibited her work widely, including in Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, Eastern Europe, South America, Iceland, the United States and Canada. Janieta Eyre: Incarnations, edited by Suzanne Zelazo, was published in 2017 by Coach House Editions.

Martine Leavitt – author and writing teacher

High River, Alberta

Martine Leavitt has published 10 novels for young adults, most recently Calvin, which won a Governor General’s Literary Award in 2016. My Book of Life by Angel was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book of the Year. Other titles by Leavitt include Keturah and Lord Death (a finalist for the National Book Award), Tom Finder (winner of the Mr. Christie Award) and Heck Superhero (a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards). Currently, Leavitt teaches creative writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in High River, Alberta.

Jennavieve McClelland – writer and musician

Toronto

Jennavieve McClelland is a conceptual artist performing bedroom punk and spoken word under the stage name Lehrerin, whose work circles – and loops – around the idea of the “double” – projections onto others what is within, and the holy merges and splits that follow. Her debut album, “Double,” is available on glitter, hand-painted cassettes.

McClelland was an Archive Assistant/”Shitworker” for the Maximum RockNRoll Digital Archive Project, has guest lectured and curated events on the Aesthetics of Everyday Life (University of Toronto), The Feminist Beat Space (Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, Albuquerque, New Mexico), and DIY Video Art (Double Land, Toronto). She holds a Master of Arts degree in Literatures of Modernity from Ryerson University, and writes for Pleasence Records, Broken Pencil and Exclaim! magazine.

Tristram Lansdowne – visual artist

Toronto

Tristram Lansdowne is based in Toronto. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (2016) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design (2007). His practice – which includes watercolour, sculpture, installation and print – is focused on themes of progress and idealism in landscape and architecture. Lansdowne’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across North America and the United Kingdom, and can be found in various public collections – including Ottawa’s National Gallery of Canada. He is represented by Galerie Nicolas Robert in Montréal.