The 8th House: In conversation

Saturday, March 28
4:30pm to 5:30pm
Online via Zoom
$0.00

Out of stock

Description

Join The 8th House founder Chloé Bramble for Charting Your Writing Path, a panel discussion featuring Asiah Sparks, Cory Lavender, and Andre Fenton.

Speakers

  • Asiah Sparks is a polydisciplinary African Nova Scotian creative, storyteller, writer, and arts facilitator from Dartmouth, with roots in the historically Black community of Lake Loon/Cherry Brook. Their practice lives where creativity meets care. 

    Grounded in community and shaped by her lived experiences, Asiah’s storytelling navigates the rich terrain of identity, love, and resilience. Their work exists to disrupt the flattening of Black narratives, creations center joy, vulnerability, and the fullness of being. 

    While poetry remains her foundation, Asiah is deepening her practice through the exploration of screenwriting and filmmaking. Their directorial debut, "Healing Through Poetry," a documentary-style short inspired by a healing arts workshop they facilitated for Black women, has been selected for the 2025 Emerging Lens Film Festival. 

    As the founder of Art of Soul, Asiah continues to curate spaces that invite reflection, dialogue, and creative liberation. A former Youth Poet Laureate of Halifax and recipient of both the Provincial and HRM Volunteer of the Year Awards, Asiah creates to build worlds where others might find themselves, too.

  • Cory Lavender is a poet of African Nova Scotian and European descent living in Mi’kma’ki. His work has appeared in journals such as Grain, Prairie Fire, Riddle Fence, and The Fiddlehead, and in Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Press, 2020). His full-length collection of poems, Come One Thing Another, is out in 2024 with Gaspereau Press.

  • Andre Fenton is an award-winning African Nova Scotian writer, performer, and arts

    educator who has represented Halifax at seven national spoken word festivals across Canada. He founded The Ink Collective in 2025, a program to help Black writers find their path in the publishing industry. He is the 2023 recipient of the Portia

    White Protege Award and a 2022 recipient of an Emerging Artist Recognition Award

    from Creative NS Awards. Andre is the author of three young adult fiction novels,

    Worthy of Love. ANNAKA, which was the 2022 recipient of The Community & Place

    Award from Digitally Lit, and The Summer Between Us, which won Gold in The Coast’s 2022 Best Of Awards. Andre has facilitated writing and performance workshops in over 100 classrooms across Nova Scotia. He is currently screenwriting the film adaptation of his novel, ANNAKA, which is being produced by Fine Devils Films. Andre is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.