MF GALAXY

ALSO: MINISTER FAUST’S “LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF” “Tololwa Mollel is a children’s author, dramatist and storyteller, who has written seventeen internationally published books , and several plays as well as stories that he created or adapted for performance. His books, which include award winning titles such as Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper , Big Boy , and My Rows and Piles of Coins have been published in Canada, the U.S., Australia, England and Tanzania where he was born. His work has been translated into various South African languages, into Korean, Spanish, Serbian, Norwegian and Finnish, and of course his native Kiswahili, Tanzania’s national language. “In Tanzania, Mollel was a University lecturer and an actor and performer in a touring company that performed as far as Germany and Sweden. He continued performing in Canada but came to devote himself to writing and to the literary scene in Edmonton, serving as President of the Writers Guild of Alb...

Stunning performer combines stand-up comedy & theatre background with socially conscious verse & community organising Ahmed Knowmadic is an a ward-winning performance poet who—unlike most writers and performers—has been earning his living through his craft for the last three years by entertaining and enlightening people around the planet. He’s performed for audiences in the thousands, and in March 2015 the British Council and the Norwich Writer Centre invited him to represent Canada during the International Literature Network conference . Born in Mogadishu, Somali , in 1984, Ahmed migrated with his three older brothers and his mother to Italy during the collapse of the Somali state. Finding Italy inhospitable to his culture and religion, Ahmed and his family moved again—this time, to Canada. After a troubled stint in Ontario and an even more troubling trip back to Somalia, he returned to Canada to study theatre and comedy writing , and even performed fo...

Artist explains creation of brilliant album PIECE BY PIECE about immigrant worker women’s struggles and victories at historic GWG plant Lyricist, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Maria Dunn is the Edmontonian folk music creator of the acclaimed albums From Where I Stand, For a Song, We Were Good People, The Peddler, and the brilliant Piece by Piece . Those records have won her nominations for the Prairie Music Awards, Canadian Folk Music Award, and the Juno Award, Canada’s equivalent to the Grammys. Dunn has become famous for her creation of “social art” and historically-themed music. We Were Good People examines the lives of Canadian working folk, including the history of the African-Americans who settled in Alberta and the other prairie provinces more than a hundred years ago to create the first African- Canadian towns in the West. But of all her socially-engaged work, the most praised has been Piece by Piece. Lyrically, it’s the life stories and labou...