Brian Rigg 

Brian Rigg is a Jamaican/Canadian writer and poet based in Toronto. His poems have been published in magazines from the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. They have also been anthologized in Ma’ka, Diasporic Juks: Contemporary Writing by Queers of African Descent (Sister Vision Press) and Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets (Arsenal Pulp Press). A False Paradise, his first collection of poetry, was published by ECW Press in 2001. A small group of his poems titled Soft Animals won the 2021 Steel Toe Books chapbook competition. He is a proud LAMBDA Fellow from the 2016 cohort. During his residency, Rigg will work on a collection of poems currently titled Warrior in the Garden. Drawing inspiration from Afro-Surrealism and the Black Fantastic, the new poems will explore how absurdism and speculative fictions inform Black queer life and create spaces for disruption, resistance, and transgressive play. He will also organize a weeklong workshop crafted for BIPOC, Queer and Trans poets, culminating in a reading event.