Diaspora Dialogues—the multicultural and multidisciplinary reading series created by publisher and writer Helen Walsh—celebrates its first birthday this month with a gala celebration at the Humanitas Festival. The series, which has expanded to include a mentoring, publishing and outreach program, is designed to provide a forum for new writers (new in the sense of new to Canada) as well as writers and performers from under-represented ethnic backgrounds. The series’ first anthology, Tok—featuring writing by emerging Toronto writers, as well as new work by established authors Shyam Selvadurai, David Bezmozgis and Guillermo Verdecchia—will also be launched at the event. Here, Walsh discusses the genesis of the series and how it’s transforming the Toronto literary landscape.

What was the inspiration for Diaspora Dialogues?
It originally started when Alan Broadbent, the chair of the Maytree Foundation, came to me with an idea. (I know him because he sits on the advisory council of the Literary Review of Canada, which I publish.) Maytree is one of the biggest foundations in the country and works on immigrant issues, on both the policy side and in funding practical applications for better integrating immigrants into Canadian life. They are also interested in urban agendas, in growing strong cities. Broadbent had a conversation with the president of University College at U of T, in which she mentioned an idea about stimulating immigrant writers, and helping them find a voice and a market in the city in which they live. He looked on the Web and couldn’t really find any other examples in other parts of the world. There was something in the U.K. called Diaspora, which produced one anthology, but it was a very minor project. So he came to me and said, “Well, if we do something like this in Toronto, given that Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world, what would it be?” So I went away and had a think and wrote up a proposal, and Maytree funded it in a very substantial way. Since then, the City of Toronto has come on board and so has Department of Canadian Heritage.

Describe the first Diaspora Dialogues events.
Diaspora Dialogues was designed to encourage and support the creation of new fiction, poetry and drama set in the city of Toronto. That work is commissioned from existing writers and playwrights (some well-known ones like Bezmozgis, Selvadurai, Kerri Sakamoto), and we also put out an open call for submissions, to find new voices. We have two program streams. One is a mentoring and publishing program, through which we produce our anthology, and work with key newspaper and magazine partners to publish the work as well. We also run a multi-disciplinary reading series that we started in May 2005. Since then, we’ve had about 14 events, all over the city. One of our key priorities is to reach at-risk neighbourhoods. So, we’ve done an event at Jane and Finch and one in Malvern. We’re running a youth writing and performing camp in Malvern this summer, and events in South Etobicoke/Lakeshore this fall.

Do the writers whose works you’re soliciting identify themselves as diasporic?
It’s a loose term. For us, it’s been a term in flux. The focus of Diaspora Dialogues is still on first- and second-generation immigrants, but it’s a broad category. I fit into it myself, having been the first person in my family born in Canada. So there’s a large portion of the Toronto population represented. But we wanted to make sure we had a diversity of voices, and a diversity of experiences. Sometimes we partner with PEN Canada and exilic writers, who are here because of political reasons, not necessarily economic ones. Other times writers deal very explicitly with issues of diaspora. Selvadurai edited a collection of South Asian writing called Story-Wallah. He wrote a long introduction about the notion of diaspora—how it’s changed, how it no longer just means living away from a homeland. It has a new fluidity; one can live in multiple places. That, for him, is the Canadian experience.

It’s much different than (to use one example) the big generation of Jewish-American diasporic writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, who were American, who wouldn’t think of going back to the Ukraine, say, or to Israel.
At first, we used the phrase “immigrant writer,” and we didn’t really think through how that would hit some people. Who wants to have “writer” narrowly defined? Who wants to be a “female writer?” We’ve learned. The language we use is more careful. We’ve also recently opened up Diaspora Dialogues to aboriginal voices, after a long discussion with that community.

That’s something the aboriginal community sought?
Drew Hayden Taylor recently wrote an article about how the aboriginal community is the fourth diaspora, in the sense that they’re diasporic within their own land. They’re disenfranchised in so many ways. It would be strange, if we were going after cultural diversity, to ignore the aboriginal community because they didn’t fit into a narrow definition of immigrant. It would be wrong.

Do you think Toronto’s literary community is more diasporic than those in London or New York?
I think Toronto has a good record of supporting writers from different cultural backgrounds. If you think of the top five or 10 writers—I hate to say top, but you know what I mean—in this country, there’s everyone from Rohinton Mistry and M.G.Vassanji to Michael Ondaatje and Rabindranath Maharaj to writers of Caribbean background such as Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke. Then there’s the Asian diaspora: Wayson Choy, Kerri Sakamoto, Joy Kogawa. A lot of our big names come from immigrant backgrounds (something that, of course, has been great for our project). But there are two things about that. The first language of most of those writers is English, which leaves out a huge amount of people who don’t speak the language. But it also leaves out more recent waves of immigrants who have a harder time navigating the system, being comfortable enough in the city to feel they have a role in it. That’s part of what we do: try to outreach. We’ve had a hard time finding, for example, Arab writers and Latin-American writers. So there are pockets we’ve identified that we do consciously reach out to.

The Globe and Mail’s Lisa Rochon argues that one of the problems with development in Toronto is its focus on creating homes for predominantly affluent downtown dwellers, and that the suburbs and exurbs—where most recent immigrants have to settle—are being underserved by development. The same is true for most arts programming, including the many reading series the city already enjoys.
We want to take the art to where people live. What we did at the very beginning was meet with groups who serve newcomers (like the Council of Associations Serving South Asians) and distributed our materials through them. We wanted to find out exactly where people live and what they are doing. So each year, we pick two or three neighbourhoods that aren’t downtown. All of our downtown events have been filled to capacity, in the 100 to 150 people range. Which is quite good for a reading, as you know, although we are presenting more of a multidisciplinary event. On May 31st, we’ll be in a venue that seats 300, so we’ll see if we can fill that. In other regions, attendace been a bit less, but still somewhere between 50 and 75. In a car culture like Malvern, that’s still pretty good.

Do you think getting people to readings is a matter of having to educate that public, who aren’t used to such events in their neighbourhoods?
Yes, and what we did last year was just have one event per community, which isn’t the most effective way to do it. This year we’ve spent three months doing events in each community.

Do you tailor the events to the ethnic makeup of each community?
We always make sure we have at least one reader from that community. The libraries have been great in helping us with that. But we refuse to limit our programs to a single ethnic background. It’s all about dialogue. We have three main objectives. One, to help writers who are newcomers or under-represented find their audience. Two, to show the true face of Toronto to older Torontonians—not old in the sense of age, but those who have come before. To say to them, you may think you know what Toronto is, but that image is 20 years old. And three, to help build a multicultural audience for the arts. In literature, writers have had a pretty good shot at getting in—as long as their first language is English. But the Department of Canadian Heritage has shown flat sales projections for Canadian book titles unless inroads can be made into newcomer communities. Those are the only communities that are growing in Canada. We’re starting to do much more theatre now, because the theatre community has a real problem with the aging and whiteness of its audience. Look at the Tarragon or Soulpepper: it’s pretty much all white, all the time. (Not so much for the Factory or Theatre Passe Muraille, which have made a point of cultural diversity.) But it’s a real challenge to figure out how to reach those audiences and then offer them something they want to watch or read.

Do you sometimes think that what you’re doing approaches social work?
It’s always about the art first.

But there is the danger, I think, that while what you’re doing is wholly admirable, in your striving for inclusiveness the art might suffer.
I know what you mean. But I don’t think so, because the groups we’re talking about—first- or second-generation immigrants and aboriginals—make up 70 to 75 per cent of the city’s population. It’s a huge amount of people we’re accessing. The fact that they’re not well represented is not their failure, but the culture’s. The stories we get are very, very good. And what we select from the open call is based on quality; it’s read by a blind jury. With the commissioned work, we do insist on diversity. But again, if you look at the quality of the writers who fit into our mandate, it’s a large portion of the creative class in the city. We’re not about giving a voice to everybody, but rather finding the most promising voices and making sure they find a way to get the market they should get. It’s the same argument that’s used when discussing affirmative action. But unless you plant a stake in the ground, nothing will ever change.

Diaspora Dialogues launches Tok at the Humanitas Festival on May 31, with readings by Rabindranath Maharaj, Kerri Sakamoto, Pier Giorgio DiCicco, Teenah Edan, Laila Haidarali and others. A party with live music, featuring Lal, will follow. Cooler by the Lake at Yonge and Queens Quay. 416-944-1101, ext. 227, www.diasporadialogues.com