Biography: Sharanpal Ruprai, PhD is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Dr. Ruprai is an internationally recognized writer, her début poetry collection, Seva was shortlisted for the Stephen G. Stephansson Award for Poetry by the Alberta Literary Awards in 2015. Her most recent collection, Pressure Cooker Love Bomb was celebrated many times in 2019 and 2020, as it was shortlisted for four awards. She was selected to be the Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program housed in the Department of English at the University of Calgary in 2019-2020. She was honoured to be awarded The Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal by The Writers’ Guild of Alberta.

Residency Project:

Sharanpal Ruprai: “What I hope to achieve with this residency is to walk away with a completed first draft of a book-length poetry manuscript. The Riding Mountain residency will allow me the opportunity to focus on the task of writing and will provide me with some physical space to write outside my office environment and my hectic day job! I need a bit of isolation for this project to focus, while being immersed in nature will inspire how my words take shape on the page. My plan for the Deep Bay cabin, is to write and layout the poetry book. I have four sections: “Auntyji,” “Five Metres (long poem),” “Braid Us Whole” and “Oonth Means Camel.” I make specific artistic choices around including religious elements. For example, I use the turban as a gender disrupter in my poetry; all genders wear turbans in my long poem “Five Metres,” which comprises the second section. In the third section, all genders have long hair and braids in my poem, “Braid Us Whole,” a poem that links together Sikh children and the pressures of wearing keeping their hair. The title poem of this section delves into the connection between genders and how the fight for bodily autonomy, and struggle for language are braided together. With this collection, I have a very specific audience in mind, that is, Sikh/Punjabi Diasporic communities.”

Author Reading & Talk are free to attend. All are welcome.

Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Listing.