The Factory Reading Series, August 21, 2025: Currin, Heinis, JAAWORD + Pirie,

The Factory Reading Series Presents:
readings by:

Jen Currin (Vancouver)
Shery Alexander Heinis (Ottawa)
Jamaal Amir Akbari/JAAWORD (Ottawa)
Pearl Pirie (QC)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Doors 7pm / Reading 7:30pm
Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa

Jen Currin has published two collections of stories, Disembark (House of Anansi, 2024) and Hider/Seeker (Anvil Press, 2018), which was a finalist for a ReLit Award and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book. They have also published five collections of poetry, including Trinity Street (House of Anansi, 2023) and The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010), which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for a LAMBDA and two other awards. Currin lives on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Halkomelem-speaking peoples, including the Qayqayt, Musqueam, Kwikwetlem, and Kwantlen Nations, in New Westminster, BC. They teach creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Shery Alexander Heinis [pictured] is a St. Lucia born poet, writer, and former diplomat. She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of In Our Tongues Reading and Art Series, an Ottawa-based arts non-profit that showcases, nurtures, and advances Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists from the National Capital Region and across Canada. She is the author of A Greater Whole, as well as her debut poetry collection, Splinter (self-published). Her work has appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine, The League of Canadian Poets’ Black History Month Chapbook, These Lands, Bywords, In\Words and more. She has been a feature reader at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, VERSeFest Ottawa and The Tree Reading Series among others. Shery is featured in BREATH, a multimedia immersive art installation and the documentary film FOUR WOMEN  on Bell Fibe TV1 and CBC Gem. 

Jamaal Amir Akbari or JAAWORD is an award winning poet, songwriter, recording, screen and performance artist, arts educator and creative entrepreneur.  He is Ottawa’s 2017-2019 Poet Laureate Emeritus, and his career in arts education earned him 2016's Ontario Arts Educator Award.

He has brought his work to audiences nationally and abroad, and served as Carleton University’s Artist in Residence for the 2019-2020 school year. He also founded the Origin Arts & Community Centre in 2015, a performance arts hub on the edge of Ottawa’s Hintonburg neighbourhood that provides an event space for performing artists to share their passion. 

His topics range from emotional maturity to black heritage, from parenting to the human condition. He resides in rural Marathon Village, ON, with his wife and 8 children, using the national capital region as his launch pad to teach, mentor and advocate for the arts.

Pearl Pirie lives quietly & slowly in rural Quebec and Ottawa. Her latest is we astronauts from Pinhole Poetry. www.pearlpirie.com 

Queen Mob's Teahouse: rob mclennan interviews City of Ottawa Poet Laureate JustJamaal The Poet

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the thirty-fourth interview is now online: my interview with City of Ottawa Poet Laureate JustJamaal The Poet. Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah, Brad Casey interviewed byEmilie Lafleur, David Buuck interviews John Chávez about Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing, Ben Fama interviews Abraham Adams, Tender and Tough: Letters as Questions as Letters: Cheena Marie Lo, Tessa Micaela and Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Kristjana Gunnars’ interview with Thistledown Press author Anne Campbell, Timothy Dyke’s interview with Hawai’i poet Jaimie Gusman, Hailey Higdon's interview with Joanne Kyger, Stephanie Kaylor's interview with Kenyatta JP Garcia, Jaimie Gusman’s interview with Timothy Dyke,Sarah Rockx interviews Gary Barwin, Megan Arden Gallant's interview with Diane Schoemperlen, Andrew Power interviews Lauren B. Davis, Chris Lawrence interviews Jonathan Ball , Adam Novak interviews Tom Stern, Eli Willms interviews Gregory Betts and Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Kasia Jaronczyk, Karen Smythe and Greg Rhyno.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: Geoffrey Young, Claire Freeman-Fawcett on Spread Letter, Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

If you are interested in sending a pitch for an interview my way, check out my "about submissions" write-up at Queen Mob's; you can contact me via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com