Book-length Dinner Reading: Gwendolyn MacEwen’s A Breakfast for Barbarians

Barry Callaghan has been the literary editor of Toronto Telegram; a producer and war correspondent for CBC's Public Affairs; a commentator on CTV network, 1976-1982; and is the founder and editor of Exile: A Literary Quarterly and Exile Editions, publishers of The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwan. He has published poetry, fiction and memoir, and won the inaugural W.O. Mitchell Award for a body of work.

Gwendolyn MacEwen (1941-1987) is widely recognized as one of Canada's finest, most individual and complex poetic voices. Twice winner of the Governor-General's Award, she expanded and explored the confessional and historical lyric genres in ways that remain challenging and exciting, in a voice that emcompasses the colloquial and the high rhetorical easily within the same poem. A Breakfast for Barbarians, published in 1966, is one of her finest books, and remains vital and engaging today.

Visit our store for purchasing information on this year's booklength reading of A Breakfast for Barbarians.

Lisa Foad is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in various anthologies and literary journals, including Red Light: Superheroes, Sluts and Saints (Arsenal Pulp), Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws (McGilligan Books), Matrix Magazine, and Exile: The Literary Quarterly. Her short story collection, The Night Is A Mouth, is forthcoming in October.

Louise Bak works as a writer, editor, radio broadcaster, performance artist and sexuality counsellor. She is the author of Tulpa (Coach House Books, 2002), Gingko Kitchen (Coach House Books, 1997) and emeighty (Letters, 1995). Louise has gained widespread attention as the co-host of Sex City, Toronto's only radio show focused on intersections between sexuality and culture. Her performance work has appeared in numerous galleries, festivals and video collaborations. She also hosts a salon series called The Box, which encourages communication creative borders. Her doctoral studies at the University of Toronto focus on the transperformative aspects of Cantonese opera in Canada.

Stephen Cain is the author of three poetry collections-American Standard/ Canada Dry (Coach House, 2005), Torontology (ECW, 2001), and dyslexicon (Coach House, 1998)-and a collaborative series of micro-fictions, Double Helix (Mercury, 2006), written with Jay MillAr. He is also co-author, with Tim Conley, of The Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages (Greenwood, 2006). He is a past literary editor at the Queen Street Quarterly and fiction editor at Insomniac Press, and now teaches at York University.