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On Creativity in a Productivity-Obsessed World

Panel Discussion with Gillian Turnbull, Nellwyn Lampert, Pamela Oakley, and Christian Smith

Thursday, February 27
7:00PM – 8:30PM
Online via Zoom
$10.00

Out of stock

Description

The editors of Bad Artist—Nellwyn Lampert, Pamela Oakley, Christian Smith, and Gillian Turnbull—join writer and festival co-executive director Stephanie Domet in a conversation about the challenges, rewards, and sometimes cognitive dissonance of pursuing a creative life in a culture obsessed with productivity. This conversation will include lots of time for questions from the audience—a perfect launching pad to a weekend spent getting cozy with your creativity and your writing.

Speakers

  • Gillian Turnbull is the author of Sonic Booms: Making Music in an Oil Town (Eternal Cavalier Press, 2019). She holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College, where she is now Director of Writing & Publishing. In 2021, she co-founded the writing collective Penizen, whose anthology Bad Artist was released in 2024 by Touchwood/Brindle & Glass. She has written previously for Chatelaine, Maisonneuve, The Walrus, The National Post, The Ex-Puritan, The Conversation, and Hazlitt, as well as many music publications including Penguin Eggs and No Depression. She’s currently working on a collection of speculative short stories titled Failure and an autobiographical novel detailing her investigation of her grandfather’s secret second life in the 1960s steel guitar scene of Hawaii.

  • Nellwyn Lampert is the author of Every Boy I Ever Kissed and co-contributing editor of Bad Artist: Creating in a Productivity Obsessed World. She has written or editor for CBC First Person, She Does the City, and HuffPo, and The Ex-Puritan Literary Magazine, among others. Nellwyn is a sales representative with Hornblower Book Group in Atlantic Canada and Quebec.

  • Pamela Oakley is a writer and editor. She has taught literature and communications classes and lives in Toronto.

  • Christian Smith holds a doctorate in cancer biology and has over two decades of research experience, currently serving as Manager of Research Operations at the Brain Tumour Research Centre in Toronto. In 2020, he released his debut nonfiction book, The Scientist and the Psychic: A Son’s Exploration of His Mother’s Gift, blending science with personal storytelling. Christian is also co-editor of the anthology Bad Artist: Creating in a Productivity-Obsessed World, exploring themes of creativity and art.