On Short Stories, Comics and Mentorship

Join us for a celebration of community, collaboration and creativity featuring Tea Mutonji, whose debut is the first book to be published under the imprint VS Books, curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya, featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous writers, or writers of colour. Hosted by Anna Shah Hoque.

In Téa Mutonji’s disarming debut story collection, Shut Up You're Pretty , a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator’s experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.

Having found success and acclaim as a musician, poet, essayist and writer for young readers, Vivek Shraya turns her attention to the graphic novel. A collaboration with illustrator/artist Ness Lee, Death Threat is a comic book that, by its existence, becomes a compelling act of resistance. In the fall of 2017, Vivek began receiving vivid and disturbing transphobic hate mail from a stranger. Using satire and surrealism, Death Threat is an unflinching portrayal of violent harassment from the perspective of both the perpetrator and the target, illustrating the dangers of online accessibility, and the ease with which vitriolic hatred can be spread digitally.