Write Now! Presents: January Rogers and Matthew Dawkins

January Rogers, Writer-in-Residence
January is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from Six Nations of the Grand River. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1963 and raised in southern Ontario. January traveled throughout 2017-2019 doing back-to-back residencies in Vancouver, Santa Fe and Edmonton. January lives on Six Nations territory of the Grand River where she owns and operates Ojistoh Publishing and Productions. January works in page poetry, spoken word performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poetry with music. She is a radio broadcaster, documentary producer and media and sound artist.

Her literary titles include: Splitting the Heart, Ekstasis Editions 2007; Red Erotic, Ojistah Publishing 2010; Unearthed, Leaf Press, 2011; Peace in Duress, Talonbooks 2014; Totem Poles and Railroads, ARP Books, 2016, As Long As the Sun Shines (English edition), Bookland Press, 2018, with a Mohawk language edition released in 2019 and French translation released in 2021. Ego of a Nation is January’s 7th poetry title which she independently produced on the Ojistoh Publishing label in 2020.

January has produced and written gallery and broadcast media with 2Ro Media since 2015. She won the American Indian Film Festival BEST MUSIC VIDEO 2020 for “Ego of a Nation” and the imagineNATIVE Media BEST EXPERIMENTAL SOUND PRIZE 2021 for her sound piece, “The Struggle Within.” She wrote and produced a comedy audio pilot titled NDNS on the Airwaves and, in May 2022, she released a 10-episode webseries she wrote of the same name.

Matthew Dawkins, Student Writer-in-Residence
Matthew is a Jamaican award-winning author and poet whose works on Wattpad have amassed nearly half a million reads. His work focuses on subjects from his personal experience such as adolescence, love, loss, culture, and mental health. Matthew is currently a student in the Department of English and Writing Studies and The School for Advanced Studies in Arts and Humanities. When he's not writing, Matthew can often be found re-watching the Harry Potter series on Netflix for the millionth time and procrastinating on his assignments. Until We Break is his debut novel set for release in Fall 2022. Matthew’s work has been published in Symposium and Semi-colon.

About Write Now!

This talk is part of Writing 2520A (Write Now! - Writers on Writing) offered by the Department of English & Writing Studies at Western University. Writing 2520A is organized around a series of lectures by writers. Every week, a new writer visits the class to read from their work, talk about their writing and their career, and answer questions. Guest lectures are open to Western students, staff and faculty.

For more information please visit: www.uwo.ca/writing.

Everyone is welcome!