The Goethe-Institut Toronto is proud to present Olumide Popoola in conversation with Jordan Tanahill.
© Herby Sachs
Olumide Popoola
Olumide Popoola is a London-based Nigerian German writer and speaker who presents internationally.
Her novella this is not about sadness was published by Unrast Verlag in 2010. Her play Also by Mail was published in 2013 by Witnessed (edition assemblage) and the short story collection breach, which she co-authored with Annie Holmes, in 2016 by Peirene Press. Her full-length novel When we Speak of Nothing was published in the UK and Nigeria in 2017 and in 2018 in the US (Cassava Republic Press).
Her publications also include critical essays and creative non-fiction, hybrid pieces and poetry.
Olumide holds a PhD in Creative Writing, a MA in Creative Writing and a BSc in Ayurvedic Medicine. She has lectured in creative writing at various universities and regularly gives workshops and masterclasses.
In 2004 she won the May Ayim Award in the category Poetry.
She has received grants, fellowships and residencies from Grants for the Arts/Arts Council England, UEL, Djerassi, Künstlerdorf Schöppingen and Hedgebrook, amongst others.
She is the initiator and leader of the Arts Council funded mentoring scheme for emerging LGBTQ+ writers, The Future is Back.
Olumide is Writer in Residence at Greenwich University for 2019/20.
© Jordan Tanahill
Jordan Tanahill
Jordan Tannahill (b. 1988) is a Canadian novelist, playwright, and director of film and theatre.
He has been described as being ‘widely celebrated as one of Canada’s most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists’ (Toronto Star); ‘one of Canada's most extraordinary artists’ (CBC Arts); ‘the enfant terrible of Canadian theatre’ (Libération); and ‘the hottest name in Canadian theatre’ (Montreal Gazette).
Jordan’s plays have been translated into ten languages and widely honoured in Canada and abroad. He has twice won a Governor General's Literary Award for Drama: in 2014 for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays, and in 2018 for his plays Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom. He was also a finalist for the award in 2016 for Concord Floral.
His plays, performance texts, and productions have been presented at venues including The Young Vic Theatre (London), Sadler's Wells (London), The Kitchen (NYC), Festival d'Avignon (Avignon), The Lincoln Centre (NYC), The Deutsches Theater (Berlin), The Volkstheater (Vienna), Canadian Stage (Toronto), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), The National Arts Centre of Canada (Ottawa), Woolly Mammoth Theatre (Washington DC), The Edinburgh International Festival, and on London's West End.
His debut novel Liminal, a work of autofiction, was named one of the best Canadian novels of 2018 by CBC Books, and longlisted for the Prix des Libraires du Québec in 2020. In her review of the novel, Martha Schabas of The Globe and Mail said ‘Liminal captures something illuminating and undefinable about the present moment; it speaks in the code and cadences of the late 2010s and paints an incisive portrait of the demographic we call millennial’, and compared it to the work of authors Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk, and Karl Ove Knausgaard.
His second novel, The Listeners, will be published in summer 2021 by HarperCollins.
As a filmmaker, Jordan's work has been presented in festivals and galleries the world over. His virtual reality performance Draw Me Close, produced by the National Theatre (UK) and the National Film Board of Canada, was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival and Venice Biennale in 2017, and ran at London's Young Vic Theatre in January 2019. Jordan has also worked in dance, choreographing and performing with Christopher House in Marienbad for the Toronto Dance Theatre in 2016 and 2019, and writing the text for Akram Khan's dance pieces Xenos and Outwitting the Devil, both currently touring internationally.
From 2008 - 2016, Jordan wrote and directed plays through his theatre company Suburban Beast. The company’s work was staged in theatres, art galleries, and found spaces, often with non-traditional collaborators like night-shift workers, frat boys, preteens, and employees of Toronto's famed Honest Ed's discount emporium. From 2012 - 2016, in collaboration with William Ellis, Jordan ran the alternative art space Videofag out of their home in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. Over the four years of its operation, Videofag became an influential hub for queer and avant-garde work in Canada. The Videofag Book was published by Book*hug Press in 2017.
He lives in London, UK.
