Upcoming Event: Lakehead Presents Leanne Simpson
Release by the Lakehead University English Student's Association, organized by Ashley Friesen
Get to know the ESA!
Do You Have a Passion for English?
The English Students' Association (ESA) is a group of like-minded lovers of literature at Lakehead University. The ESA produces the Artery, Lakehead's literary magazine, and hosts a variety of events throughout the school year, all of which are geared toward creative expression. While the group provides peer tutoring and other academic support specific to its parent program, the club is not exclusive to English majors.
Past events include Poetry Slams, book sales, and the production of the ESA’s literary magazine, The Artery, which publishes student creative writing and visual art.
All are welcome! Volunteering as a member of the ESA is a great experience and an enjoyable way to get to know other students outside the classroom. If you would like to get involved with the ESA, please check out the information at https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/departments/english/english-student-association/the-artery
Are You Interested in Writing?
The Artery is a student base not-for-profit Magazine run through Lakehead University’s English Department. Our goals are to promote creativity on and off-campus, by showcasing the talents of Lakehead’s talented artist. For over ten years, the students of Lakehead University have produced a complication of campus creativity into an annual edition of The Artery. However, we do not only punish poetry, prose, and visual art; we provide exposure for our artist and writer through our various social media platforms and events. Best of all, we are a community of creative minds who want to connect with artists.
Artery Deadline
Submissions to the Artery are due on January 15th, 2021. All submissions can be sent to luartery@lakeheadu.ca for consideration. Submission requirements can be found on the English department website under The Artery tab.
https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/departments/english/english-student-association/the-artery
or contact luartery@lakeheadu.ca.
Upcoming Event
LAKEHEAD ENGLISH DEPARTMENT WELCOMES CELEBRATED ANISHINAABE WRITER LEANNE SIMPSON FOR 2020 MUNROE LECTURE (ZOOM)
Lakehead University's Department of English invites members of the public in Thunder Bay, Orillia and beyond to join them on Zoom on the evening of November 24, 2020 at 7pm for a reading and discussion with award-winning Anishinaabe writer, storyteller and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. The event, which is co-sponsored by the university’s Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Thunder Bay Public Library, celebrates the recent publication of Simpson’s latest novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies (Anansi, September 2020).
Simpson will speak for 20-30 minutes, followed by Q&A. Members of the public who wish to pre-register and pose questions for the author are asked to use a form at the following link: https://forms.gle/Jj2XJWUsb4WfQEGc9 .
The link to the zoom webinar event is: https://lakeheadu.zoom.us/j/91093260928
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Image sourced from https://www.leannesimpson.ca/about
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, scholar, and musician, and a member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of five previous books, including This Accident of Being Lost, which won the MacEwan Book of the Year and the Peterborough Arts Award for Outstanding Achievement by an Indigenous Author; was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award; was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads; and was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, National Post, and Quill & Quire. She has released two albums, including f(l)ight, which is a companion piece to This Accident of Being Lost.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Image sourced from https://www.leannesimpson.ca/book/2020/4/19/noopiming
Award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns with a bold reimagination of the novel, one that combines narrative and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics.
Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world, a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks, and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world, only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned, contained, counted, and consumed. Cut off from nature, the characters are cut off from their natural selves.
Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush,” and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie’s 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpson’s work is an act of decolonization, degentrification, and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits, who are all busy with the daily labours of healing — healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together. Enter and be changed
For more information, contact Dr. Judith Leggatt, Professor and chair of the English Department Events Committee: jleggatt@lakeheadu.ca
